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last updated: Wednesday, May 13, 2009

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       2008 News Archive (in zip file. Right click, choose "Save As" to download) 

        contains the following:

  • Political Monopoly Power - a commentary

  • Florida Prosecutor Sought Sex With 5 year old Girl

  • Group Asks IRS To Investigate Arkansas Pastor's Sermon

  • Bush Announces Visa Waiver For 7 Countries

  • 9/11 Victims Families Lawsuit Thrown Out:

  • 53 Criminal Cases Dismissed in California Due To Lack Of Judges

  • Two Broward County Lawyers Apply To Join Florida Supreme Court

  • Seeking a Remedy for America?

  • California Supreme Court Fears Existence Of - JAIL4Judges

  • Handouts for Deprived Judges!

  • Access to Grand Juries Are Being Blocked

  • States Seizing Citizens' Property To Balance Their Budgets

  • Law School Study Ranks Michigan Supreme Court Worse In Country

  • Nancy Grant Released From Prison

  • Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Gun Ownership Rights

  • Restricting Firearms Make England More Crime-Ridden Than U.S.

  • Court Rules For Prisoners

  • Scores of Gitmo Prisoners May Get Freedom After Ruling

  • Latest News on Nancy Grant - June 2, 2008

  • Justice O'Connor Criticizes Judicial Accountability Legislation

  • Bad Prosecutors Should Face Prison - an Editorial

  • Supreme Court Rules: Cops May Search Even if Arrest Invalid

  • U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs Other Nations

  • White House Asked DOJ How Bush Could Sidestep 4th Amendment

  • J.A.I.L. Sues Florida Bar in U.S. Supreme Court

  • NIU: ONCE AGAIN, NOBODY HAD A GUN

  • Corrupt Florida Judiciary Makes International Headlines

  • Perjury Charge Looming For District Judge

  • County Officials Claim Courts Are A Private Enterprise

  • We Do Not Have Civil Rights

  • Florida Bar Sees JAIL4Judges As A Threat!

  • Independence Panel Concerned By Threats - The Florida Bar's Judicial Independence committee twisted view on JAIL4Judges & our website admin's notes.

       2007 News Archive (in zip file. Right click, choose "Save As" to download) 

        contains the following:

  • C-Span Judicial Accountability Briefing

  • 'Demanding Justice' March on Washington DC - Nov 14-16, 2007

  • Florida Grandmother Charged Criminally To Life In Prison For Jail Ministry

  • Grant's Trial On Trial - Update 2

  • Grant's Trial On Trial - Update 1

  • Nancy Grant's Press Release

  • Nancy Grant On Trial

  • County Officials Claim Courts Are A Private Enterprise

  • Pro se Litigant sues 764 judges

  • Broward Judge Retires After Getting Caught Smoking Pot - read the comment

  • A review of Judge Korda's recent pot-smoking arrest

  • Prosecutors Seek OK To Create Phony Files

  • Broward Judge Faces Ethics Charges

  • U.S. Marine Vietnam Vet Seeks Judicial Reform

  • We Do Not Have Civil Rights

  • Judicial Qualifications Commission Dismisses Grant's Complaint About Closed Door Hearings

  • Grant Responds to Chief Justice Lewis of Florida Supreme Court

  • Florida JAIL4Judges Interviews Nancy Grant

  • Grant's Motion To Dismiss Denied

  • Why is Grant's bond so high?

  • Civil Rights Advocate Arrested

  • Activist Rips DeSoto Justice System

  • County Jail Faces Issues Of Age, Sanitary Conditions

  • Florida Bar Sees JAIL4Judges As A Threat!

  • Independence Panel Concerned By Threats

  • RESTORE THE CONSTITUTION - Why the original 13th Amendment is missing.

  • The Story of the Buck Act

 

      2006 News Archive (in zip file. Right click, choose "Save As" to download) 

        contains the following:

  • JAIL4Judges Election Debriefing 2006

  • Hard Evidence of Press Bias

  • South Dakota's Election Results

  • The Opposition Makes The Case For Amendment E

  • California Judiciary Frightened Over J.A.I.L.

  • Gross Prosecutorial Misconduct Blown Over By Justice Dept

  • Accountability Initiative Attacks Legislature, Citizens - from someone who didn't even bother to read what the initiative is.

  • Please Read The Initiative, Mr. Barnett - a rebuttal.

 

reposted from the Common Sense Gun Lobby email

 

Anti-Gun Senate to Ban Private Gun Sales

 

by Alan Gottlieb
Chairman
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms



Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Jack Reed (D-RI) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have joined Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and victims and family members of the Virginia Tech tragedy, to introduce legislation to eliminate the private transfers of firearms and close the nation's "gun show loophole."

YOU ARE IRRATIONAL IF YOU SUPPORT PRIVATE GUN SALES

"There is no rational reason to oppose closing the loophole. The reason it's still not closed is simple: the continuing power of the special interest gun lobby in Washington" Sen. Lautenberg said ignoring the Constitution.

Select Here to Reject All Gun Bans and Fax All 99 Senators

Lautenberg went on to add still more to the "90% Obama Mexican Gun Lie":

"Thirty percent of the guns that go to Mexico are bought at gun shows." With NO supporting evidence Lautenberg continued, "We don't know whether they're bought from unlicensed dealers, but logic would say let's have some idea who it is that bought those guns and what their intentions might be."

Lautenberg and the Gun Grabbers in the Senate are also lying about the Virginia Tech gunman who had a background check at a legal gun store to justify themselves. There were abundant warning signs that he posed a serious threat to the campus. Yet he was running loose because the gun check system failed.

NO SUCH THING AS 'GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE'

Independence Institute researcher David Kopel has written about the "gun show loophole," concluding that it is a myth: Says Kopel:

"Despite what some media commentators have claimed, If a dealer sells a gun from a storefront, from a room in his home or from a table at a gun show, the rules are exactly the same: he can get authorization from the FBI for the sale only after the FBI runs its "instant" background check"

CRIME GUNS DO NOT COME FROM GUN SHOWS

The Bureau of Justice Statistics report entitled "Firearms Use by Offenders" found that less than one percent - 0.7%, to be exact - of guns used in crimes originated at gun shows.

NICS: DEFACTO GUN REGISTRATION

New York (D) Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand proposed computerized background checks be retained creating a de facto gun registration system and Lautenberg's Bill proposes private transactions be added to this registration system.

LAUTENBERG'S MOTIVES

Motives for eliminating gun shows are twofold:

First, gun shows are a powerful tool in defeating gun control legislation.

Second, eradicate the gun show and gun culture altogether.

All that seems to be on the minds of the Anti-Gun Senators and at the offices of gun control extremists is figuring out how to exploit tragedy to erode and eventually destroy the right, and the means, of self-defense.

Select Here to Reject All Gun Bans and Fax All 99 Senators

Now the Anti-Gun Coalitions are trying to use tragic events to destroy gun shows and the right of all Americans to keep and bear arms to protect themselves under the law. They are attacking and hiding behind an Anti-Terrorist Agenda while getting political and financial support from:

George Soros a Hungarian-born billionaire bank rolling efforts with his check book and spending more that $100 million to destroy the Constitution.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA) admitted that "guns would be banned and confiscated" if she could have her way.

The United Nations actively pushes globalism seeking to disarm all Americans.

We must Stop the Anti-Gun Coalition and get ready for the biggest gun control fight of the year from coast to coast.

Stand up against this attack! Stand up for the right to not only defend yourself, but to defend your family, your children, your friends, and your classmates!

Select Here to Reject All Gun Bans and Fax All 99 Senators

Like all other threats against our freedoms, we must rise and defeat this bill, slap it down hard.

The legislation is cosponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Charles Schumer (D-NY), John Kerry (D-MA), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

In order to stop Schumer, Kerry and Kennedy and their fellow gun-grabbers, we need to let the Congress know with thousands of faxes telling them to leave guns alone.

Americans like you who understand what our Founding Fathers envisioned for our nation...and who are willing to fight to defend our Constitution and for what it stands.

So please, help the Citizens Committee defeat those who wish to gut and trash the United States Constitution.

Help flood the U.S. Senate with a sea of FAXES big enough to drown each and every Senator willing to vote away the Second Amendment.

Please, send your FAX TODAY!

Select Here to Reject All Gun Bans and Fax All 99 Senators

Keep calling your Senators today, toll free numbers include 1-877-851-6437 and 1-866-220-0044, or call toll 1-202-225-3121 AND REGISTER YOU'RE OUTRAGE at ongoing efforts to take guns away!

CALL PRESIDENT Obama, 202-456-1111 and 202-456-1414 expressing your disdain and ABSOLUTE REJECTION of all GUN BANS.

DO NOT BE SILENCED - MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

NOTE: We need TENS OF THOUSANDS of faxes and PHONE CALLS and EMAILS delivered to ALL Senators right away!

Together, we can preserve the Constitutional rights our Founding Fathers intended our people to have forever.


Alan Gottlieb
Chairman
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

TAKE THE EMERGENCY GUN RIGHTS SURVEY

 

-30-

 

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/04/prweb2360464.htm

Feds Tackle 20 Swine Flu Cases But Ignore 100,000 Toxic Chinese Drywall Homeowners???

by www.prweb.com 
April 27, 2009

The Homeowners Consumer Center, a Florida watchdog consumer counseling group, is calling for a town hall meeting in South Florida, 

"so we can educate Florida & the nation about the worst national environmental disaster ever, that affects up to a million innocent US citizens."

According to the group's spokesman, "100,000's of US homeowners and their families are living in 
homes that might contain a ticking time bomb, called toxic Chinese drywall & we are worried about 20 
cases of swine flu?."

 

The group is inviting homeowners in larger sub divisions in Fort Myers, or Cape Coral Florida, whose communities 
contain toxic Chinese drywall to call the group at 866-714-6466, to coordinate a national show & tell in 
their subdivision or community. "We need a larger sub division in Fort Myers or Cape Coral to allow us to 
have a real national press conference about this national disaster, in their club house, or in a nearby 
hotel. President Obama, the US Congress, & the national TV networks/press will be invited." "

Why a national town hall meeting in South Florida involving homeowners in subdivisions and condominiums? 
"South Florida is infested with toxic Chinese drywall, so a national show & tell will be a decisive way 
to educate Florida, the nation, the US Congress & our President, about this potentially lethal building 
product. We need leaders in subdivisions to step up to the plate, to get some help for themselves, their 
neighbors, & other victims around the nation." For more information, homeowners in South Florida 
subdivisions, condominiums, and or single family homes, who have toxic Chinese drywall in their homes 
should contact the Homeowners Consumer Center at 866-714-6466, or contact the group at 
Http://HomeownersConsumerCenter.com.

So what is the big deal about imported toxic Chinese drywall? "Hundreds of thousands of American 
homeowners in most, if not all US states, may now be living in a toxic home, or building worth nothing, 
because of toxic Chinese drywall. They are in many cases sick. They are all innocent victims, and they 
need our nations help now," said the group's spokesman.

The Homeowners Consumer Center is convinced that in Florida alone, there are 
150,000+ new, or remodeled homes, or condominiums with toxic Chinese drywall. Other states with 
significant quantities of toxic Chinese drywall include Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Colorado, the 
Carolina's, Nevada, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and other US States. The group is saying, "its time 
for the Obama Administration & the US Congress to get their act together, on the national toxic Chinese 
drywall disaster, & a two month questionnaire is a joke, and an insult to 100,000's, of at risk American 
families."

What is known about toxic Chinese drywall? It was first imported to the US in 2001, it is toxic enough to 
corrode copper, & other metals. In humans, exposure to toxic Chinese drywall is causing upper respiratory 
issues, severe headaches, nose bleeds, rashes, severe allergy type symptoms, for many of the occupants 
who live in these homes. Exposure to the gasses emitted by toxic Chinese drywall may also cause 
electronic failures in TV sets, DVD players, LCD displays, light bulb failures, air conditioning 
failures, etc. [* ADMIN NOTE: Essentially anything that has copper & silver in it will become corroded.] 

According to the Homeowners Consumer Center, "the $64,000 question is will short and long term exposure to toxic 
Chinese drywall kill US citizens, their children, loved ones, or give them cancer?"

[* ADMIN NOTE: Sounds like Orwelian population control to us.]

QUOTE-OUT: "There are no real testing protocols, we don't even know how to fix these homes, or if in fact 
they are salvageable, & the best the US Consumer Products Safety Commission can do is come up with a 
questionnaire, sponsored in part by the homebuilders, who installed the toxic Chinese drywall, in a 
process that could take months, and months, and months?"


The Homeowners Consumer Center considers the toxic Chinese drywall issue the absolute worst environmental disaster for 
US homeowners in history, that will involve most, if not all US States.
Since South Florida is totally 
infested with this toxic building product, the group is inviting homeowners in all subdivisions, 
condominiums, or single family homes in Southwest Florida, where toxic Chinese drywall has been installed 
to participate in a town hall meeting in Fort Myers or Cape Coral, Florida, so the nation can learn more 
about this disaster. The group believes the toxic Chinese drywall fix will have to involve a 
Congressional rescue plan. For more information homeowners in South Florida, or any other state can 
contact the Homeowners Consumer Center and 866-714-6466, or contact them via their web site at 
http://HomeownersConsumerCenter.com.

The Homeowners Consumer Center spokesman said "On Saturday, April 25th, an older woman in Florida called me weeping. She 
had just discovered toxic Chinese drywall in her home. Aside from being worried about now having a home 
worth zero, she was very concerned about her health. There currently is no federal help for the 100,000's 
of victims like this. It is astounding that the US Consumer Products Safety Commission does not even 
mention toxic Chinese drywall on its web site. While I am not the best messenger, I will not stop trying 
to help these victims in Florida, and in every other US State, now at risk. I will not back down for 
these innocent homeowners." 

Americas Watchdog and its Homeowners Consumer Center have been advancing a national and state by state 
investigation of toxic Chinese drywall for nearly four months. The group is announcing they have 
discovered toxic Chinese drywall in significant quantities in Colorado. Earlier this week the group 
announced it had found the toxic imported building product all over Texas.

According to the group, "When people talk to us, or read about toxic Chinese drywall, its like an 
epiphany, and they say oh my God, they are talking about me, and my house. At some point the Obama 
Administration is going to have to get involved in what we are calling, the absolute worst environmental 
disaster for US homeowners in history." The group goes on to say that, "We need a meaningful federal 
response to this disaster, people are getting sick in these houses, & the toxic Chinese drywall is going 
eventually kill people."

To date the US Consumer Products Safety Commission has yet to even recall this product.

Aside from Texas & Colorado, what other US States have new or remodeled homes with toxic Chinese drywall? 
Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, Connecticut, the Carolina's, Georgia,
Arizona, California & Nevada.

What Are The Updated Indicators Of A Home or Condominium Having Toxic Chinese Drywall?

The house has to have been built or remodeled after 2000. Most homes that will have the toxic Chinese 
drywall were built between 2003 & 2007. There may, or may not be a sulfur/rotten egg smell.

Most Importantly Health & Toxic Chinese Drywall:
There have been no formal health studies on the affects of exposure to toxic Chinese drywall. However, 
some common denominators appear to present, as follow: nose bleeds, headaches, coughs, upper respiratory 
or sinus issues, rashes. In many cases victims have gone to a physician or a emergency room only to be 
told, "We can't tell what is wrong with you."

The Homeowners Consumer Center believes that exposure to toxic Chinese drywall, and some of these medical 
symptoms are related, because homeowners in new homes in different parts of the country, different 
states, all share two things in common -- the fact that Chinese drywall is in their house and they have 
these medical conditions. In many cases not everyone in the family will share the same symptoms. In some 
cases, the adults are fine, but the children are sick, or in other cases, the adults are sick and the 
kids are not. In many cases all of the homes occupants are sick. Family pets may have died from exposure 
in US homes with Chinese toxic drywall.

Note with respect to health & exposure to toxic Chinese drywall one the Homeowners Consumer Center has 
heard repeatedly is, "I am in the house with the suspected Chinese drywall & I feel sick, or my family 
members are sick. We leave the home for a few days, or a week, & we all feel better."

Other Indicators of Toxic Chinese Drywall in a New US Home, Town Home or Condominium:


* Homeowners, building owners, or occupants in most cases will have seen continuous failures of their 
air conditioning coils, or HVAC units beyond anything normal. Homeowners who suspect they might have the 
toxic Chinese drywall in their home should check the cooper coils on their air conditioning units. If the 
AC copper coils have turned black, or a grayish black they should suspect Chinese Drywall.

* Homeowners, building owners, or occupants may have noticed corroded, or black electrical wiring in 
their walls in properties built or remodeled since 2001. Many homeowners who have the toxic Chinese 
drywall in their home might have copper grounding wires in the electrical receptacles that have turned 
black. Homeowners who suspect their home may have the Chinese drywall can remove electrical receptacle 
plates to see if the cooper ground wire has turned black.

* Oven, or stove elements, or refrigerator coils may have failed in the homes, or condominiums a 
number of times. The Homeowners Consumer Center has also discovered that computer & microwave information 
display panels [LCD's] may have failed in homes, where the toxic Chinese drywall is present.

* Light bulbs in homes with toxic Chinese drywall may burn out at a much faster rate than specified 
by the manufacturer.

* High end silver jewelry, or silver plated utensils may become tarnished faster than usual. [Some 
occupants have reported their jewelry turning completely black.]


Note to all US Citizens. "If you have friends, or family who live in a new, or remodeled homes since 
2001, & the family has had severe medical issues, combined with copper discoloring, electrical issues, 
light bulbs going out, at an unusually high rate, please share this press release with them, & have them 
contact the Homeowners Consumer Center at 866-714-6466, if they have the symptoms. The group's web site 
is located at http://HomeownersConsumerCenter.com

Paul Davis Restoration has helpful advice at 
http://restorationofbroward.com/cm/Reconstruction/DefectiveSulfurDrywall.html

(they are a general contracting company, who typically charges between $10,000 to $25,000 to replace Chinese drywall in a homeowner's ENTIRE home).


-30-

 

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://www.bradenton.com/news/story/1389612.html

Nelson Rips Feds Handling Drywall

by LESLEY CLARK and DUANE MARSTELLER
BradentonHerald.com
Apr. 24, 2009


WASHINGTON - A frustrated Sen. Bill Nelson declared Thursday that federal investigators are moving too 
slowly on Chinese drywall, as the number of complaints continues to rise in Florida and the state’s 
attorney general is warning that the issue has attracted scam artists.

Emerging from a private briefing with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental 
Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nelson again called for the firing 
of the commission’s acting chairwoman. He also pressed President Barack Obama to put the drywall issue 
"at the top of his agenda" when he visits China this summer.

"I asked how harmful is it and they said, ‘We’ve got to wait ’til the end of our study,’ " said Nelson, a 
Florida Democrat who has proposed a temporary ban and recall of Chinese-made drywall. "But when are you 
going to have some definitive information?’"

Sen. Bill Nelson's Senate speech on Chinese drywall - 
http://demradio.senate.gov/actualities/billnelson/billnelson090424.mp3 


Homeowners in Manatee County and elsewhere in Florida have complained to state health officials in recent 
months about Chinese drywall installed in their homes. Residents say the drywall emits a foul odor, has 
ruined electrical outlets, air conditioners and metal jewelry, and caused wheezing, nosebleeds and other 
health problems.

The Florida Department of Health has received 302 complaints as of Thursday, with a dozen coming in the 
past week. There are 31 complaints from Manatee, but none recently.

Nancy Nord, the commission’s chairwoman, said her agency "moved rapidly" after the first reports, pulling 
together a number of agencies and dispatching an investigator to Florida.

"Our agency has taken the issue very seriously since day one," she said in an interview outside the 
hearing room. "We’ve been working diligently to get to the bottom of the situation. Obviously when people 
are getting sick just by living in their homes, that’s of worry to the agency and to me personally."

She declined to comment on Nelson’s call for her termination. Nelson, though, says he is disappointed the 
federal agencies haven’t estimated how widespread the problem is or offered immediate relief for 
homeowners. He repeated his call for Nord’s firing later Thursday, when he and Obama hosted the 
University of Florida’s champion football team.

"I suggested to them this is an enormous problem, people’s health is at risk . . . . We can’t wait around 
much longer," Nelson said. "What we’ve got to do is continue to demand answers."

Joe Martyak, the commission’s chief of staff, said they are working as fast as they can and recognize the 
need to determine just how serious a health risk, if any, the drywall poses.

"We are aggressively going after the problem, it’s just that the science doesn’t know what is causing the 
problem," he said later in a phone interview. "We all want those answers yesterday, but it’s not going to 
happen in the short term . . . . Everyone is engaged, everyone knows it’s urgent."

Also Thursday, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum issued a consumer advisory against Chinese 
drywall-related scams.

His office has received complaints of bogus test kits to determine the presence of the defective drywall 
and of "quick-cure" remedies that don’t work or could make the problem worse, he said.

Homeowners who suspect they have defective Chinese drywall should contact their builder or a qualified 
air conditioner technician to conduct a professional visual inspection, McCollum’s office said. Chinese 
drywall’s presence can’t be detected by testing the air, as some of the fake test kits purport to do.

Nor can any spray or ozone generator solve the problem, and can accelerate the corrosion process by 
adding moisture and chemicals, he said.

Homeowners also should be wary of cold calls and door-to-door solicitation by unqualified drywall 
"experts," McCollum said. 

COMMENTS:
joetaxpayer wrote on 04/26/2009 05:37:06 PM: 
Funny that the headline says Nelson ripping feds....don't you know that Nelson IS the fed! He is the 
change that we voted in....oops, he has been there all along. Real change would be voting him out!

Frankie99 wrote on 04/25/2009 01:01:50 PM: 
Yeah lets just sit around and wait to see how many people will be put out of their homes because of this 
crap! If it was GM or AIG, the money would be there and the problem would be solved....another case where 
the only time the people matter is when it comes time to vote...I get it!! Funny how that works
, hey?

Oleander9 wrote on 04/24/2009 10:52:45 AM: 
To my knowledge, none of the toxic boards are green boards and there were no hospitals built during those 
years. Some schools were, but they have all been cleared of having it.
5 different manufacturers of toxic 
board have been identified. The board alone is dank. Many builders, sub contractors and suppliers refused 
it upon delivery because of the dank smell.
When primers, plaster and or paint are applied, the moisture 
applied will strongly increase a release of off gassing, until the application dries. That is no 
different, other then milder, then what happens on a hot and humid or cold and damp day, when all toxic 
gas hell breaks loose in a house with this junk. It's ability to cross contaminate most anything in it's 
path, is very strong. It's a wicked chemical cocktail brewing in those walls, that gets WORSE with time, 
not better. Board that is already 6 years old, is as potent as ever. I doubt it will ever completely off 
gas.

Floridatucky wrote on 04/24/2009 09:21:33 AM: 
Why not go after the root cause of this problem? Inferior imports from China, period. They've been trying 
to kill us for a long time, with lead in dishware and children's toys, God knows what in pet food that 
kills the pet, etc. STOP IMPORTING INFERIOR GOODS FROM CHINA! I blame the greed of businesses looking for 
cheapo items they can mark up big time *cough* I'm talking to you, Wal-Mart, from China. This doesn't 
belong on "the top of Obama's agenda" and that just sounds like a lot of hot air from an inept politician 
trying to curry favor with the middle class residing in Lakewood Ranch. Why is the developer off the hook 
on this one? Somebody bought and installed the faulty cheap crap from China, start with that decision 
maker and work your way back to the import source and beyond. I want tougher safeguards on all Chinese 
imports.

Oleander9 wrote on 04/24/2009 01:45:59 AM: 
What do they mean that they do not know of health risks? Their own test report detected toxic chemicals 
up to 1000ppb. See for yourself on page 4 at 
http://www.doh.state.fl.us/environment/community/indoor-air/drywall.html

Now look up the OSHA/NIOSH exposure symptoms at those levels or very close to them, just in the work 
place for healthy men, for hydrogen sulfide, carbonyl sulfide, and sulphuric acid to name the few in this 
sites studies at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/chem-inx.html

The facts are in to determine that this drywall IS certainly a domestic health hazard, where low level 
chronic exposure can lead to permanent damage.
Our government is totally inept. 
They are quicker to alert people about test kit scams, then they are about toxic poisons off gassing from 
their homes walls.

-30-

 

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://orlando.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2009/04/20/daily61.html

McCollum Warns Of Chinese Drywall Scams

by South Florida Business Journal
April 23, 2009


Florida’s attorney general is warning homeowners to be aware of scams related to Chinese drywall.

Bill McCollum’s alert comes after his office received complaints about those conducting bogus tests and 
offering to remove the corrosive properties from the drywall.

In some cases, the so-called remedies being offered cost in the thousands of dollars.

The defective, high-sulfur drywall gives off fumes, resulting in a "rotten egg" odor and metal corrosion, 
especially in air conditioners.

The Florida Department of Health has received 265 complaints about Chinese drywall since January. It has 
set up a Web site for consumers with pictures to determine if their home has Chinese drywall.

Most of the complaints have come from South or Southwest Florida, including 26 from Palm Beach County, 24 
from Broward and 20 from Miami-Dade. Most homes that contain defective imported drywall were built 
between 2004 and 2008.

In mid-February, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said it was investigating the problem. In 
March, the University of Florida’s Rinker School of Building Construction said it was starting a 
preliminary study of its own.

Several builders have acknowledged that the problem drywall was installed in their homes. Miami-based 
Lennar Corp. has a program to remove the drywall.

Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin, a division of the Knauf Group in Germany, has acknowledged some of its 
drywall imported to the U.S. in 2006 is associated with complaints of odors and metal corrosion, but the 
company has said the problem was tied to gypsum from one natural gypsum mine in Tianjin, China, which is 
no longer used.

McCollum noted that a homeowner can determine if defective drywall is present by asking the homebuilder 
or a qualified air conditioner technician to conduct a visual inspection. The presence of defective 
imported drywall cannot be determined by testing the air in the home.

If it is found, it cannot be fixed with a spray or an ozone generator. These products may make the 
problem worse, McCollum noted.

Consumers who wish to file a complaint about these scams can call the attorney general’s fraud hotline at 
(866) 966-7226 or file a complaint online at http://myfloridalegal.com .

-30-

 

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://orlando.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2009/04/13/daily70.html

Senator Aronberg Calls For Drywall Task Force

by Paul Brinkmann
South Florida Business Journal
April 17, 2009


Florida Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, is recommending a statewide plan he believes will protect 
homeowners from problems with Chinese drywall, as well as create a uniform standard to restore and repair 
affected homes.

Aronberg, who announced the plan on Friday with the Consumer Federation of the Southeast, said he would 
send a letter to Gov. Charlie Crist, asking him to appoint a special task force.

The task force, he said, should include health experts, representatives of the homebuilding industry, 
consumer advocates, scientists and representatives of drywall manufacturers. The focus would be on making 
recommendations for removing and replacing drywall, and for what new laws or regulations might be needed, 
Aronberg said.

"Expensive and lengthy litigation is not the answer," he said. "We need consumer protection laws."

If the state government doesn’t act, Aronberg said it is possible that local government will enact 
ordinances that could be conflicting or confusing,

"There’s a lot of concern -- and it’s justified -- but we need to make sure we’re not going to have a 
wave of hysteria," he said.

The defective, high-sulfur drywall gives off fumes, resulting in a "rotten egg" odor and metal corrosion, 
especially in air conditioners. The Florida Department of Health has received 265 complaints about 
Chinese drywall since January. It has set up a Web site for consumers with pictures 
to determine if their home has Chinese drywall. (http://doh.state.fl.us/environment/community/indoor-air/casedefinition.html

Most of the complaints have come from South or Southwest Florida, including 26 from Palm Beach County, 24 
from Broward, and 20 from Miami-Dade.

In mid-February, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said it was investigating the problem. In 
March, the University of Florida’s Rinker School of Building Construction said it was starting a 
preliminary study of its own.

Several builders have acknowledged that the problem drywall was installed in their homes. Miami-based 
Lennar Corp. has a program to remove the drywall.

Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin, a division of the Knauf Group in Germany, has acknowledged some of its 
drywall imported to the U.S. in 2006 is associated with complaints of odors and metal corrosion, but the 
company has said the problem was tied to gypsum from one natural gypsum mine in Tianjin, China, which is 
no longer used.

-30-

 

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/18/chinese.drywall/index.html

Chinese-made Drywall Ruining Homes, Owners Say

by By Jason Hanna
CNN
March 18, 2009


Officials are looking into claims that Chinese-made drywall installed in some Florida homes is emitting 
smelly, corrosive gases and ruining household systems such as air conditioners, the Consumer Product 
Safety Commission says.

The Florida Health Department, which is investigating whether the drywall poses any health risks, said it 
has received more than 140 homeowner complaints. And class-action lawsuits allege defective drywall has 
caused problems in at least three states -- Florida, Louisiana and Alabama -- while some attorneys 
involved claim such drywall may have been used in tens of thousands of U.S. homes.

Homeowners' lawsuits contend the drywall has caused them to suffer health problems such as headaches and 
sore throats and face huge repair expenses.

The drywall is alleged to have high levels of sulfur and, according to homeowners' complaints, the 
sulfur-based gases smell of rotten eggs and corrode piping and wiring, causing electronics and appliances 
to fail.

"It's economically devastating, and it's emotionally devastating," said Florida attorney Ervin A. 
Gonzalez, who filed one of the lawsuits. It would cost a third of an affected home's value to fix the 
dwelling, Gonzalez said.

"The interior has to be gutted, the homeowners have to continue paying mortgages, and they have to pay 
for a [temporary] place to live," Gonzalez said.

The CPSC has been investigating claims in Florida for more than a month, according to commission 
spokesman Joe Martyak. He would not confirm whether CPSC is checking other states or reveal how many 
cases it is probing.

The Florida complaints generally involve homes built or renovated in 2005 and 2006, when a building boom 
and post-hurricane reconstruction caused a U.S. drywall shortage that spurred builders to turn to 
imports, Martyak said.

The allegations come after a number of recent safety problems with other Chinese exports, ranging from 
toys to pet food.

Dick and Nancy Nelson, who say the Florida retirement home they bought new in 2006 has 
Chinese-manufactured drywall, contend all their appliances with copper are failing, according to CNN 
affiliate WFTS-TV.

"The washing machine, the dryer, the microwave, a refrigerator -- these are all brand-new appliances, and 
they're breaking down," Nancy Nelson of Palmetto told the Tampa station. The Nelsons are among those who 
have complained to the state health department.

In a neighborhood in Homestead Florida, owners of homes with Chinese-manufactured drywall say the 
dwellings smell like rotten eggs, especially on humid days, according to CNN affiliate WPLG-TV. 

Electronics and appliances with copper components stopped working in short order, and copper pipes and 
wiring turned black, homeowners told the Miami station.

"My dream has turned into a nightmare," one of the homeowners, Felix Martinez, told WPLG-TV. He said he 
closed on the home in August 2006.

Michael Foreman, head of construction consulting firm Foreman & Associates in Sarasota, Florida, said 
he's been investigating drywall complaints in that state since last year and is sharing information with 
at least one group of lawyers preparing lawsuits on the matter. Based on shipping records, Foreman 
estimates the United States in 2006 and the first two months of 2007 imported enough drywall from Chinese 
manufacturers named in lawsuits to produce at least 50,000 homes at a size of 2,000 square feet each.

Florida ports alone took in enough of that drywall during those 14 months to build 30,000 homes of that 
size, he estimated, citing records he obtained from the Port Import Export Reporting Service, a company 
that collects information on cargoes entering and leaving U.S. ports. Foreman said he has yet to see 
import records from 2004 and 2005, years covering what he said was a building boom with a high demand for 
drywall.

Two Florida attorneys involved in separate class-action lawsuits, Gonzalez and Jordan Chaikin, said they, 
too, believe shipping records indicate tens of thousands of residences in the United States, with a good 
chunk of them in Florida, may have drywall from the manufacturers.

"The breadth of this thing is a lot bigger than people think," said Chaikin of the Parker Waichman Alonso 
law firm in Bonita Springs. Chaikin said the problem is perhaps more easily recognizable in Florida 
because humidity exacerbates it.

An Alabama-based homebuilder alleges that Chinese-manufactured drywall in 40 houses it built in 2005 and 
2006 -- 32 in Alabama and eight in Florida -- caused corrosion or odor problems. The builder, Mitchell 
Co., has filed a class-action lawsuit in Florida against certain manufacturers, attorney Steve Nicholas 
said.

"We filed on behalf of builders because we believe ... they're going to be the ones with the initial 
loss" to fix the problems, said Nicholas, of Alabama law firm Cunningham Bounds.

In Miami, Gonzalez filed his class-action lawsuit for homeowners this month. The suit names as defendants 
three China-based drywall manufacturers that the plaintiffs say are affiliates of Germany-based 
manufacturer Knauf Gips KG, [who was also named], along with three Florida developers and two 
distributors.

The Miami suit seeks compensation and medical monitoring of the homeowners.

Joerg Schanow, a member of Knauf Gips' board, said in a telephone interview with CNN that the Chinese 
manufacturers named in the suit are part of Knauf Group, but not controlled by Knauf Gips KG.

"We here in Germany do not manufacture Chinese drywall. [Knauf Gips KG has] never asked companies to 
manufacture Chinese drywall for us or on our behalf. And there is no relationship at all," Schanow said. 
"I'm confident we will rebut this."

On its Web site, the company says the Knauf Group operates 150 factories worldwide, including the three 
Chinese production facilities named in the lawsuit.

One of the Chinese manufacturers named in the suit, Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin (KPT), said in a statement 
released through U.S. representatives that tests by an expert toxicologist it retained found "no 
associated health risks with the KPT product." KPT is still investigating whether its product has caused 
any corrosion, spokeswoman Yeleny Suarez said.

In a separate statement released through KPT's U.S. representatives, lawyers said there is no basis for 
the other two China-based manufacturers, Knauf Plasterboard Wuhu and Knauf Plasterboard Dongguan, to be 
part of the lawsuit and the manufacturers "will defend themselves vigorously."

At least two other class-action lawsuits -- one in Florida, the other in Louisiana -- name as defendants 
Knauf Gips, KPT and a Chinese drywall manufacturer not connected to Knauf, Taishan Gypsum Co. In a 
telephone interview with CNN, a Taishan Gypsum representative said "it's impossible that our products are 
found to emit poisonous gas in America," adding that the company didn't export to the United States.

Martyak declined to say which Chinese manufacturers the CPSC is investigating.

And Foreman cautions that not all Chinese drywall manufacturers who exported to the U.S. are accused of 
supplying a defective product.

The Louisiana suit, filed by the Becnel Law Firm of Reserve, Louisiana, claims defective Chinese drywall 
was installed in a home in Pearl River.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals has received one complaint related to the drywall issue 
by phone, J.T. Lane, the department's deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday.

The department is in touch with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Florida Health 
Department, and is "trying to determine what might be the public health impact for Louisiana and what the 
most appropriate response to this is," Lane said.

CNN's Luo Yingying contributed to this report.

-30-

 

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://www.bradenton.com/961/story/1235090.html

More Sign On To Drywall Lawsuit:
40-plus homeowners join lawsuit filed in Sarasota County


By JESSICA KLIPA - jklipa@bradenton.com
BradentonHerald.com
Feb. 18, 2009


The number of homeowners who have signed on to civil suits involving tainted drywall across the state 
continues to mount. 

More than 40 homeowners have joined a class action lawsuit filed in Sarasota County, said Darren Inverso, 
attorney for the law firm, Norton, Hammersley, Lopez & Skokos. 

The claim originated with a complaint from homeowner Kristin Culliton, who moved out of her Lakewood 
Ranch home built by Taylor Morrison because of alleged problems with drywall manufactured in China. 

Inverso said th firm is seeking certification for two classes: homeowners who have homes built by Taylor 
Morrison, and Florida homeowners who have the drywall manufactured by Knauf Tianjin installed in their 
homes.

The lawsuit, which is open to Florida homes built from 2004 to 2007, alleges product liability on the 
part of Knauf Tianjin, which sold drywall to suppliers and distributors, including USG, Rothchilt, and 
L&W Supply. 

The lawsuit also alleges breach of contract, breach of implied warranty and negligence against Taylor 
Morrison. Inverso said that through the contract, Taylor Morrison homeowners should expect to buy a home 
with materials, fixtures, equipment and appliances of equal value to the materials installed in the model 
homes. 

It’s likely that as the class-action lawsuits across the state continue to grow, they will land in 
federal court and be rolled into one lawsuit, Inverso said.

More than 100 homeowners have contacted another law firm in Bonita Springs, Parker Waichmann Alonso LLP, 
which has filed a class action suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, in 
Fort Myers, on behalf of Florida homeowners. 

The lawsuit, filed against manufacturers, distributors and suppliers of the Chinese drywall, alleges 
product liability and negligence, among other things, said Jordan Chaikin, attorney for Parker Waichmann 
Alonso LLP. But the list is likely to grow as the firm sorts out the pieces of who may have been 
involved.

"We are in the process of amending the complaint to include additional defendants who we believe are 
responsible parties," Chaikin said. "Every day we’re getting more information. So because of that we have 
determined there are other responsible parties out there."

In addition, the firm is handling homeowners’ cases regarding homebuilders on an individual basis for 
breach of contract and negligence.

The class-action suit applies to Florida homeowners whose homes were built using the tainted drywall. 
Homeowners are also able to opt out of the lawsuit.

The firm is compiling a database of homeowners whose homes exhibit the symptoms of the Chinese drywall. 
Builders that used the drywall include Lennar, Taylor Morrison, WCI, Meritage Homes, Ryland Homes, 
Transeastern and Standard Pacific, he said. 

Chaikin believes a class-action lawsuit is the appropriate way to handle the situation since the 
homeowners are all experiencing the same problems, including corrosion and ultimate failure of 
air-conditioning units, blackening and tarnishing of household items and a foul odor in the home. "I’m a 
firm believer in class-action," he said. "It not only makes it much more efficient, but it benefits a lot 
of people in a single action." 

Litigation also takes time, and homeowners are living with the problem until it’s corrected.

"There is some urgency to pursue every avenue that’s out there and, again, make the homeowner whole," 
Chaikin said.

It's likely that as the class-action lawsuits across the state continue to grow they willl land in 
federal court and be rolled into one lawsuit, Inverso said.

More than 100 homeowners have contacted another law firm in Bonita Springs, Parker Waichmann Alonso LLP, 
which has filed a class action suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, in 
Fort Myers, on behalf of Florida homeowners. 

The lawsuit, filed against manufacturers, distributors and suppliers of the Chinese drywall, alleges 
product liability and negligence, among other things, said Jordan Chaikin, attorney for Parker Waichmann 
Alonso LLP. But the list is likely to grow as the firm sorts out the pieces of who may have been 
involved.

"We are in the process of amending the complaint to include additional defendants who we believe are 
responsible parties," Chaikin said. "Every day we’re getting more information. So because of that we have 
determined there are other responsible parties out there."

In addition, the firm is handling homeowners’ cases regarding homebuilders on an individual basis for 
breach of contract and negligence.

The class-action suit applies to Florida homeowners whose homes were built using the tainted drywall. 
Homeowners are also able to opt out of the lawsuit.

The firm is compiling a database of homeowners whose homes exhibit the symptoms of the Chinese drywall. 
Builders that used the drywall include Lennar, Taylor Morrison, WCI, Meritage Homes, Ryland Homes, 
Transeastern and Standard Pacific, he said. 

Chaikin believes a class-action lawsuit is the appropriate way to handle the situation since the 
homeowners are all experiencing the same problems, including corrosion and ultimate failure of 
air-conditioning units, blackening and tarnishing of household items and a foul odor in the home. "I’m a 
firm believer in class-action," he said. "It not only makes it much more efficient, but it benefits a lot 
of people in a single action."

Litigation also takes time, and homeowners are living with the problem until it’s corrected.

"There is some urgency to pursue every avenue that’s out there and, again, make the homeowner whole," 
Chaikin said.

-30-

 

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2009/jan/28/wci-supplied-chinese-drywall-one-subcontractor-say/

WCI Supplied Chinese Drywall, One Subcontractor Says

by TARA E. McLAUGHLIN
NaplesNews.com
January 28, 2009


NAPLES - WCI Communities, the Bonita Springs-based homebuilder in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings, 
provided Chinese-manufactured drywall to subcontractors who installed the product, according to a 
subcontractor who oversaw drywall on a WCI development.

Dennis Longley, who had been a project manager for Distinctive Finishes, a Fort Myers-based company, in 
2005 and 2006 was told WCI would be supplying Chinese drywall the company was having shipped in by barge.

Longley said his company then had to adjust its contracts to subtract the cost of drywall. Two phone 
calls to Distinctive Finishes went unanswered this week.

"What a pain in the butt that’s going to be," he recalled thinking. "It’s easier for the subcontractor to 
have their own materials. (Otherwise, it adds a) layer of management."

A half-dozen phone calls and e-mails placed and sent to WCI spokesman Thomas Mulligan over two weeks went 
unanswered. The messages offered WCI an opportunity to respond to questions about WCI’s use of imported 
drywall.

Chinese drywall has been blamed for a sulfur-like odor and chemical emissions tied to failing air 
conditioning units and corroding copper fixtures, such as electrical wiring. Some homeowners have also 
reported respiratory complications, itching throat and burning eyes.

The Florida Department of Health has received about 30 complaints throughout 10 southern Florida 
counties, including Lee and Collier.

Distinctive Finishes did 90 percent of WCI’s projects in Lee and Collier counties, according to 
Distinctive Finishes’ Web site.

Longley was not sure who manufactured the board but recalled Chinese markings on tabs that are used to 
secure together two pieces of board.

At least one company, Knauf Plasterboard (Tianjin) Co., has been identified as delivering an unknown 
quantity of drywall, also called plasterboard, sheetrock and gypsum board, to the United States during 
the building boom.

Other Chinese drywall may have also been used because some people have reported board stamped with the 
word "China," although no company name appeared.

Longley did not remember which WCI community had been built with the imported drywall, but remembered 
that his installers did not like working with it.

"It was definitely different," he said. "The finished product looked the same. It was heavier, it broke 
different. When you’re installing the large sheets, you have to cut it with a razor knife and literally 
break the board. It’s usually a good clean square cut off break. The China board didn’t break that well; 
it was more jagged."

It is unclear if the Chinese product used by WCI was from Knauf, which only made half-inch board, said 
Knauf Tianjin spokeswoman Melisa Chantres. Rothchilt International was the importer.

Longley recalled that the Chinese product had also been used in garages that typically require 
five-eighths of an inch board and fire safety standards. The Chinese product did not have fire ratings.

"That’s where the guy at WCI in charge of construction, he didn’t want it there at all," Longley said. 
"Finally he won the battle because we found out there was no (Underwriters Laboratories fire test 
ratings). We stopped using it entirely."

Several houses passed inspection with the imported drywall, however, he said.

WCI, with developments in Florida, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Virginia, filed for 
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Aug. 4 as it faced about $2 billion in debt.

Anyone hoping to get money from WCI must file a formal claim with the Delaware bankruptcy court no later 
than 4 p.m. Monday, according to a Dec. 15 notice published in the Daily News and five Florida and 
national newspapers.

"If they don’t file a claim, all bets are off," said Mike Shuster, a corporate bankruptcy attorney for 
Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur who represents some creditors in the WCI bankruptcy.

While there is no way to know at this point what, if any, payments a creditor could receive, the claim 
has to be filed to be considered at all, he said.

Builders outside Florida may have used imported drywall even before the boom years created a shortage in 
domestic product.

After hearing media reports of a sulfur-like smell and corroding copper linked to Chinese drywall, a 
couple from an Atlanta suburb believe they may have found clues to a four-year mystery.

"I was just almost like jumping up and down," said Sue Cardinal of Kennesaw, Ga. "It’s like somebody 
wrote my story."

Since 2004, when the Cardinals bought their home in the Burnt Hickory Registry neighborhood, the couple 
spent more than $10,000 trying to uncover the source of the sulfur smell that permeated their 
2,900-square-foot home on Registry Lane.

They sought help from a geologist, air quality experts and plumbing companies. They pulled up carpet, 
painted and searched for dead animals in the walls. They even installed carbon filters and a radon 
mitigation system thinking it would clear other chemicals from the home.

The previous owners had reported water damage that had been fixed, Cardinal said, and air quality 
specialists had told her the smell would not have been caused by this.

"Some people think I was some kind of cuckoo bird," she said jokingly.

After media reports of Chinese drywall, Cardinal examined a section of exposed board and found it stamped 
"made in China." She was not able to see a manufacturer’s name.

"After (the) realization, I said, ‘Oh my God. What are we talking about? Hundreds of thousands of 
dollars?" She said.

Purple letters in two lines across the half-inch board read "Manufactured to conform to ASTM standard 
C36
" followed by a quarter-size purple dot, Cardinal said.

Pennsylvania-based ASTM International, a standards organization, was formerly known as the American 
Society for Testing and Materials. C36 was a standard for drywall that was replaced in 2005 by 
C1396/C1396M.
[**ADMIN NOTE: It's possible the offending wallboard was made BEFORE 2005 and 

was then stored until sold after 2005.]

Standards on the ASTM Web site explain requirements for a noncombustible gypsum core bonded with paper 
and accounts for such things as the board’s ability to deflect humidity and how the board handles pulled 
nails.

Cardinal said she found corrosion of electrical wiring in several areas throughout her house similar to 
reports in the Florida cases.

Neither she nor her husband experienced health problems possibly associated with the drywall. She has 
coughed up blood on occasion but attributes it to her struggles with allergies.

The house was built in 2001 by Haven Properties, which recently went out of business, according to a Dec. 
5 article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle. The telephone numbers listed for this company were not in 
service.

Jim DeVille, president of Donny Brook Homes, which also built homes in the Burnt Hickory Registry 
neighborhood, said Haven had a good reputation and was not known for cutting corners.

Builders in Georgia tend not to supply materials, he said. A product could have made its way from 
manufacturer to supplier to subcontractor into a home without anyone realizing it was faulty.

"If their vendor chose to use imported sheetrock, that’s a possibility," he said.

Neither the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 4 office in Atlanta, which covers the 
southeastern United States, nor the Georgia Division of Public Health received calls with similar 
complaints, according to spokeswomen from both agencies.

The EPA is aware of one other case outside Florida, in Virginia Beach, said spokeswoman Dawn 
Harris-Young.

Data compiled from air samples in and around six Southwest Florida homes taken in 2006 and 2008 
determined the levels of carbon disulfide and carbonyl sulfide were too low to be considered a health 
risk, said Phillip Goad, principal toxicologist for the Little Rock, Ark.-based Center for Toxicology and 
Environmental Health, which is consulting for Knauf.

Lennar, a Miami-based homebuilder, found about 80 of its Southwest Florida homes had been built with 
imported drywall. The company is in the process of replacing drywall and affected fixtures in several 
homes, according to a statement by Darin McMurray, division president.

COMMENTS:

"WCI is more to blame in purchasing a product like this just BECAUSE THEY ARE CHEAPSKATE BUILDERS....
Welcome to WCI communities, a division of "Our drywall might kill you, but who cares, as we've already 
sold off our shares."
- posted by BEETLEJUICE

"Boran, Craig, Barber, Engel was the likely contractor on 90% of WCI' work...are they still in business?"
- posted by TREXLER

"Has anyone tried to decontaminate the sulfur with a chemical reaction? It may be possible to bind it 
into a compound that will not off-gas."
- posted by certifieddecontaminationutah

-30-

 

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://orlando.bizjournals.com/orlando/othercities/southflorida/stories/2009/01/19/daily28.html

Lennar Admits To Chinese Drywall Problems

by South Florida Business Journal
January 21, 2009


Miami-based homebuilder Lennar Corp. said it has identified about 80 homes in Southwest Florida that are 
believed to have been built using Chinese drywall. The nation’s second-largest homebuilder (NYSE: LEN) 

said it has set up a special task force to address homeowners’ concerns and fix the problem.

The issue is a concern because the drywall apparently emits chemicals that purportedly cause health 
concerns. Many homeowners have complained about a sulfur odor.The homes were built in 2005 and 2006, 

during the real estate boom years.

Lennar discovered the drywall issue through routine monitoring of home repair requests.

"When we noticed that a number of our homes in Southwest Florida were experiencing problems with 
air-conditioning systems, we began taking a closer look," the company said in a news release.

Some drywall can emit a naturally occurring sulfur compound that, when it interacts with the copper in 
the air conditioning coil, can cause corrosion and lead to failure. The company said independent subcontractors 

installed the drywall in some homes and that Lennar did not know it was being used.

Lennar said it has already moved a number of homeowners, and so far is assuming the cost of the 
relocation and repair for 12 homes.

[Although Florida's Attorney General Bill McCollum said "Chinese drywall’s presence can’t be detected by testing the air"] 

Lennar said it has hired Environ, an environmental firm, to conduct air sampling in its homes.

"The environmental scientists and toxicologists at Environ have confirmed that the presence of sulfur 
compounds inside the homes believed to have been built with imported drywall is far below even the most 
stringent government health and safety standards," Lennar said in its news release.

Lennar stock market shares are down from $22.73 on April 7 2007, to $7.08 today.

COMMENTS:

BY Samantha Theaumont 
April 9, 2009 11:35AM EST

"I cannot believe it, another incident where innocent people are being seriously affected and in many 
cases harmed. The Chinese drywall issue is yet another occasion where materials shipped from overseas are 
damaging the lives of American people, putting their health at risk. How many times are we going to let 
this happen, from salmonella in peanut butter to tainted baby formula, the news of drywall from China 
causing foul odors and leading to corrosion of air conditioners and other household appliances, adds to 
consumer’s worries about how safe we really are. I have stated many times in my blogs that we must learn 
how to keep ourselves safe and refuse to introduce materials into our homes that can harm us. The new 
drywall issue resulted from two major changes in drywall use and production. Builders use domestic 
drywall made from natural gypsum, however, due to the demand in building materials as a result of the 
building boom and Hurricane Katrina, drywall demand was greater than the supply. Manufacturers in China 
were then used to supply to the American market. Investigators have identified homes with Chinese drywall 
and occupants are experiencing odors described as rotten eggs and sulfur-like, with corrosion occurring 
on air conditioning units and copper wiring. Reports from other independent investigations have 
correlated these observations. The reason for the odors and corrosion are related to the gases being 
emitted from the drywall. Sulfur containing compounds like sulfur dioxide are being measured in homes 
along with hydrogen sulfide, carbon disulfide, iron disulfide, volatile organic compounds and mercaptans. 
The exact long term health effects of these compounds have not been fully determined and are currently 
being studied by the Florida Department of Health. AirMD is involved in advising homeowners on the 
necessary actions to take. What we have observed is many homes have several different types of drywall 
throughout the home. Some drywall is from the U.S., some is from China while other drywall from China is 
not causing an issue and this mix is greatly compounding the problem. In one home, three separate pieces 
of drywall were observed in an area smaller than 15 square feet. Two pieces had issues while the other 
did not. It is nearly impossible and cost prohibitive to identify individually each of the pieces of 
drywall responsible in each home. For this reason the developers must remove the drywall in a home 
identified with these issues and also replace systems (A/C) as necessary. Unfortunately, for many 
homeowners it seems this is too little too late and correction of the problem must be independently 
monitored. We cannot allow the companies that caused the problem, to self regulate the solution."

Paul Davis Restoration has helpful advice at 
http://restorationofbroward.com/cm/Reconstruction/DefectiveSulfurDrywall.html



-30-

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Judge_says_its_okay_for_Navy_0316.html

Judge Says OK For Navy To Spray Recruits With Banned Chemical


The Navy can spray recruits in the eyes with pepper spray, even though it has been linked to death and is banned during warfare by international law, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The decision, revealed by the blog of Legal Times (http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/), is in response to a case brought by naval officers, who argued that the practice of "subjecting trainees to a direct shot of pepper spray was dangerous and deprived them of their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection. They said the Navy could rely on less intense training methods, such as smearing a small amount of the spray on the skin beneath the eyes, or forcing trainees to walk through a room that had previously been sprayed."

But Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he wasn’t in a position to overrule the Navy’s decision to continue the practice.

"The use of direct-impact [pepper] spray indisputably risks injury, but the agency decided that this risk was offset by the benefits of training," Leon wrote. "Plaintiffs allegation that the action was ‘clearly not the product of reasoned thought,’ is little more than a legal conclusion and provides insufficient support for its claim that the agency decision was arbitrary and capricious."

Pepper spray is made from oleoresin capsicum, an oily extract of pepper plants. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, there have been 27 deaths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_spray#cite_note-7) among people sprayed in California alone since 1993, although the deaths were not directly linked to the chemical. In particular, it can be fatal for individuals with asthma.

Pepper spray is banned for use in war by Article I.5 of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The "spray may contain water, alcohols, or organic solvents as liquid carriers; and nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or halogenated hydrocarbons (such as Freon, tetrachloroethylene, and methylene chloride) as propellants to discharge the canister contents," the North Carolina Medical journal (http://web.archive.org/web/20000817004624/http://www.ncmedicaljournal.com/Smith-OK.htm) wrote in a study. "Inhalation of high doses of some of these chemicals can produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurological effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death."

According to Legal Times, the judge threw out the navy officers’ constitutional arguments as well, saying the practice of using pepper spray didn’t "shock the conscience," even though it’s banned for use in warfare by the chemical weapons convention.

-30-

For more up-to-date NEWS

reposted from http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/14/passport.security/index.html

GAO: Fake Passports Easy To get

by Mike Ahlers
CNN


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congressional investigation has exposed gaping holes in security eight years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a government report says.

An investigator used a false identification to obtain a U.S. passport and then used the passport to get an airline boarding pass and go through an airport security checkpoint, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said its undercover investigator conducted four tests of the passport issuance system and "easily" obtained passports every time.

Individuals with "even minimal counterfeiting capabilities" can obtain genuine U.S. passports, which can be used to travel overseas, open bank accounts and prove U.S. citizenship, the GAO report says.

In the "most egregious" case, it says, the investigator used the Social Security number of a man who died in 1965 to obtain a Social Security card. In another case, he used the Social Security number of a 5-year-old child and obtained a passport, even though his counterfeit documents and application indicated he was 53 years old.

"A U.S. passport is a key to virtually anywhere in the world," said Sen. John Kyl, R-Arizona. "It is very troubling that in the years since the September 11 attacks someone could use fraudulent documents to obtain a U.S. passport."

Kyl and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on terrorism, requested the test.

To perform the test, the GAO designed four scenarios. In each, an investigator simulated the actions of a malicious person involved in identity theft, then created fake documents using "off-the-shelf, commercially available hardware, software, and materials."

The investigator used the counterfeit documents to obtain a genuine Washington, D.C., identification card.

For three of the tests, the undercover investigator submitted passport applications and supporting materials at U.S. Postal Service locations that accept passport applications.

For the remaining test, it submitted the application and materials to the State Department's regional passport office in Washington.

"State and USPS employees did not identify our documents as counterfeit in any of our four tests," the GAO report says. The State Department "issued a genuine U.S. passport in each case."

"All four passports were issued to the same GAO investigator, under four different names," it says. The tests occurred between July and December of last year.

A State Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

But the GAO said in the report that State Department officials "agreed that our findings expose a major vulnerability" in the passport issuance process. State Department officials said the department's ability to verify the information submitted "is hampered by limitations to its information-sharing and data access with other agencies at the federal and state levels."

Some agencies won't share information because of privacy concerns, or because the State Department is not a law enforcement agency.

Also, the department, like other government agencies, has difficulty verifying birth certificates because there are thousands of acceptable formats for them.

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reposted from http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A66068

Popular State Sovereignty Bills Draw Comparison To Civil War Posturing

by Greg Hambrick

Charleston City Paper

The threat is only implied in more than two-dozen state sovereignty bills making the rounds in legislatures across the country, except for a New Hampshire bill where the authors didn't hold back. Any law infringing on the state's right to self govern would trigger the dissolution of the nation: "All powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution ... shall revert to the several states individually."

The S.C. House of Representatives has approved a resolution with the same state's rights concerns (but omiting the dire consequences), and the Senate is expected to soon take up a similar resolution.

S.C. State Rep. Michael Pitts (R-Laurens), who authored the House bill, says that it's not as much a threat to the Union as it is a "wake-up call." Federal mandates have strained his patience, particularly those laws relating to gun control and the treatment of illegal immigrants. Threats aren't necessary, he says.

"If Washington doesn't wake up and our economy keeps going the way it is going, I don't think we'll have to dissolve the union," he says. "It won't be able to stand."

Political revolts against federal laws are nearly as old as the nation itself. From trading to slavery to civil rights, states have felt put-upon by Washington's mandates. But it was a political standoff on Charleston's shores in 1832 that framed the argument leading to the Civil War.

It was a stand for state's rights that applied similar language to what we're seeing in the present-day debates over sovereignty, says Civil War historian W. Scott Poole, an associate history professor at the College of Charleston.

"I was fairly horrified actually," Poole says upon reading Pitt's House bill. "It clearly harkens back to nullification." 

"King Street, King Street"

A federal tariff on European imports was crippling sections of the South Carolina economy in the late 1820s, and there was no relief following the election of President Andrew Jackson in 1828. The mounting tension led the state to nullify the tariff in November 1832. The challenge from South Carolina was likely one of the worst of Jackson's presidency, writes Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Jon Meacham in American Lion, his 2008 book on Old Hickory's years in office.

The state would continue to collect the fee for several months while it awaited other southern states to join the protest. In the meantime, Jackson ordered ships to the Charleston Harbor to ensure the tariff was collected and to protect federal interests in anticipation of armed revolt. But secessionists weren't as well positioned in other states, and South Carolina nullifiers were left to stand alone. Even among its own residents, there were unionists in S.C. who felt strongly that the nation must be preserved.

In one particular exchange cited in American Lion, the political debate nearly led to a brawl in the streets of Charleston, according to a letter by the Rev. Samuel Cram Jackson.

A group of people supporting nullification "staked out King Street downtown," and they sent word to federal supporters, called Unionists, who had gathered nearby that they should use Meeting Street or risk a confrontation, according to Meacham.

"The warning infuriated the Unionists," Meacham writes, going on to quote the letter from Samuel Cram Jackson: "Their blood was up, to think that the nullifiers should dictate the street they should walk in. The cry resounded, 'King Street, King Street.' Before they left their hall, they organized into companies, chose their leaders, and promised implicit obedience. Both parties were armed with clubs and dirks." It looked to be 500 nullifiers, compared to 1,000 Unionists. The confrontation was eventually resolved without a battle. According to Samuel Cram Jackson, "it was owing entirely to the firmness and wisdom of the leaders that the streets of Charleston did not run down with blood."

Without support from other states, and citing the threat of federal force, South Carolina accepted a compromise tariff in early 1833, ending the political standoff.

Meacham notes a letter from Jackson soon after the resolution that reveals he understood the real goal of the state's nullification posturing.

"The tariff was only the pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object," Jackson wrote. "The next pretext will be the [black man], or slavery question." 

Back to the Future

As in 1832, some have claimed the modern argument over state sovereignty is in response to the crippling financial crisis, like the Republican Caucus of the state Senate.

"While Congress continues its irresponsible spending spree and grows our debts on the backs of hardworking South Carolina taxpayers, many Senate Republicans are pushing a resolution to reaffirm our state's sovereignty under the United States constitution," wrote spokesman Wesley Donehue in a recent caucus release.

But, once again, it is about more than just money.

Pitts notes he first designed his bill in response to mandates that the state provide education and emergency medical treatment to illegal aliens. And it goes beyond that to other concerns, like the threat of stricter gun control laws under the new Democratic administration, Pitts says, as well as Bush-era policies, like No Child Left Behind and the Patriot Act. Authors of sovereignty bills in other states have also made reference to federal abortion laws.

The U.S. government has been continuously overstepping its bounds since Roosevelt, Pitts says. "They send money to the states with strings attached."

But courts have determined that it's Washington's prerogative to require states to spend the money it provides in a particular way, says College of Charleston political science professor William Moore. Today, states are even more dependent on federal aid than they were 200 years ago.

"If you have your hand in the government pocket, you're going to have to abide by those requirements," he says.

The threat of secession in the New Hampshire bill has doomed its passage as it was overwhelmingly rejected by the state House earlier this month, but South Carolina is poised to approve its sovereignty resolution, which avoids declaring such drastic consequences.

Pitts, an Army veteran and retired police officer, stresses he doesn't want to see South Carolina secede from the Union, though he's candid enough to note that "we have very little in common with the West Coast."

The struggle in 1832 was only a prelude to the secessionist battle to come decades later. Jackson framed the argument for preserving the union in his response to South Carolina's nullification threat.

"To say that any state may at pleasure secede from the union is to say that the United States is not a nation," Jackson wrote. "Because the union was formed by a compact, it is said that the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it; but it is precisely because it is a compact that they may not. A compact is a binding obligation."

His words suggested a resolve in the heart of Washington that would truly be tested years later on the battlefield. Recollections of the blood spilled in that war between the states likely kept New Hampshire from approving its recent preamble to revolt. It will likely also keep other states like South Carolina from doing more than stomping their feet in dissatisfaction. 

COMMENTS:

Rex in Alabama
Secession is far from the point of the state sovereignty movement. Rather, it is this sort of common knee-jerk first-impression association with secession and the old Deep South that prevents many people from understanding with and identifying with what the 9th and 10th Amendments are really about. "State Sovereignty" was a buzzword used in the 1960s by states like Alabama and Mississippi in their attempts to defy racial integration of schools mandated by Brown v. Education, and "secession" was the cry of the Confederacy seeking to retain slavery in the 1850's. This is not associated with either of those causes, though both states' rights and sovereignty are the issues.

The Federal Government has grown to become a separate entity with its own vested self-interests, quite apart from the interests of the people. The 9th Amendment requires Popular Sovereignty to be the law of the land. It says that, though the Federal Government derives its power from the Constitution, the Constitution derives *its* power form the people, who do not abdicate that power by consenting to lend it to the government. The 10th Amendment denies the Federal Government any powers that are not specifically outlines in the Constitution, which are very few and do not include any power to rule domestically over the people. The New Hampshire resolution, defeated in the NH House, references the fact that the original 13 states, of which SC is one would never have ratified the Constitution without the inclusion of these two amendments.


JLB777
These politicians with their cavalier attitude of bowing down to the federal government are giving up their own state sovereignty to claim every last penny of stimulus dollars. It is these types of politician which will create deeper in debt federal welfare states. Our politicians have forgotten that the states created the federal government as an agent for their selves. The stimulus dollars does not have strings attached, it has federal chains attached.

The Tenth Amendment provides that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

For too long, Americans have allowed their politicians to interpret and bend the rules of the Constitution, which these representatives have taken an oath to uphold the US Constitution and their State Constitution.

By denying the passage of these state sovereignty resolutions would demonstrate the disregards these representatives have to their oath and the people of these states.

Not passing such resolutions demonstrates the denying of the US Constitution and the State Constitutions and these representatives who choose not to support this resolution could result in their replacement in the next elections
.

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reposted from http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1375484

$6,948 Of Gold Needed To Support US Dollar Value

by Peter Koven, 
Financial Post
 

Just how high could the price of gold go? Really high, according to analyst Daniel Brebner and others at UBS Securities. They plotted out a number of scenarios using various levels of strength for inflation and the U. S. dollar, and predicted that gold will not fall below US$500 an ounce between now and 2015, and could rise to US$2,500.

To get there would require inflation at 1970s levels and a weak U.S. dollar, UBS said. The bottom end of the range would require static inflation and a strong U. S. dollar.

There is one other possibility UBS raises: what if a new gold standard was adopted to support currencies, particularly the U. S. dollar? Using the current value of the U. S. monetary base and the country's reported gold holdings, UBS calculated gold would need to be at US$6,948 to support the value of the U. S. dollar.

If China and Japan are included, UBS predicted that the price would be close to US$10,000 an ounce.

The UBS team noted that a gold standard would theoretically bring some confidence back to currencies and stabilize them. But it would create all kinds of problems by removing flexible exchange rates, and they noted that not much headway has been made in this area.

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reposted from http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-drug-kidnappings12-2009feb12,0,3927610.story

PHOENIX - KIDNAP FOR RANSOM CAPITAL

February 12, 2009
By Sam Quinones
L.A. Times


Reporting from Phoenix -- In broad daylight one January afternoon, on a street of ranch-style houses with kidney-shaped swimming pools, Juan Francisco Perez-Torres was kidnapped in front of his wife, daughter and three neighbors.

Two men with a gun grabbed the 34-year-old from his van and dragged him 50 yards to a waiting SUV. His wife threw rocks at the car, then gave chase in her own SUV. Neighbors in northwest Phoenix called police. Yet when police found her later, she at first denied there was a problem.

On the phone later, as detectives listened in, kidnappers said Perez-Torres had stolen someone's marijuana.

But police were used to conflicting story lines by now. It was Phoenix, after all: More ransom kidnappings happen here than in any other town in America, according to local and federal law enforcement authorities. Most every victim and suspect is connected to the drug-smuggling world, usually tracing back to the western Mexican state of Sinaloa, Phoenix police report.

Arizona has become the new drug gateway into the United States. Roughly half of all marijuana seized along the U.S.-Mexico border was taken on the state's 370-mile border with Mexico.

One result is an epidemic of kidnapping that many residents are barely aware of. Indeed, most every other crime here is down. But police received 366 kidnapping-for-ransom reports last year, and 359 in 2007. Police estimate twice that number go unreported.


In September, police spun off a separate detective unit to handle only these smuggling-related kidnappings and home-invasion robberies. Its detectives are now considered among the country's most expert in those crimes.

That Thursday afternoon last month, Perez-Torres' abduction fell to the unit's two most seasoned detectives, Gina Garcia and Arnulfo "Sal" Salgado, as they were about to leave work. Over the next 42 hours, the kidnapping would consume their every waking moment.

"You never know which way it's going to go," Garcia said. "Sometimes you hear the victim screaming, pleading for help, pleading for their life. You have to stay calm. Talk is huge in this business."

Talk got serious that night, about seven hours after Perez-Torres was abducted.

Over the phone, the kidnapper sounded drunk.

"Get moving," he told Andres, a partner with Perez-Torres in a small-scale auto sales business, who pretended to be the victim's brother. "Start selling things."

He demanded $150,000.

Standing with Andres in the department's "kidnap room" -- a small office with a window, television and tape recorder -- Garcia mouthed responses. "Tell him you want to talk to the victim," she said. "Don't agree to anything."

Garcia was a child when she crossed the Mexico-Arizona border illegally with her parents and eight siblings. She grew up in a tough Phoenix barrio, obtained legal status and was steered to police work by a youth activities program. Five years ago, she joined the kidnapping unit, and has worked hundreds of cases since then.

Her job is to steady the nerves of victims' relatives as they take calls from kidnappers, who often torture their victims while talking to the families. Sometimes she steps in and, in a bit of life-or-death theater, pretends to be the victim's cousin or friend. That's when her native norteño accent pays off.

Andres, who asked that his surname not be used for this article, didn't need much calming. He pleaded well -- not too whiny, not too insistent.

"Put yourself in my place. I want to know how my brother is. I want to hear his voice," he said. "Why don't you put him on the phone for a bit?"

The kidnapper refused, said he'd call the next morning. The conversation ended.

In Phoenix, kidnappers apparently don't call after midnight; usually, they're sleeping or they're high. So Garcia and the other detectives went home. It was late, and things were off to a typical start.

Ransom kidnapping is a rare crime in America. Most cops go their entire careers without handling one. These days, most kidnappings involve a husband taking a child from an estranged wife. That's how things were in Phoenix until a few years ago.

Then things changed in Sinaloa.

Along the Pacific Coast several hours south of Arizona, Sinaloa is the state where drug smuggling in Mexico began. Most Mexican cartels originated there. Kidnapping was how they collected debts. For many years, they kidnapped other smugglers and left law-abiding citizens alone.

But after several major traffickers died or went to prison, younger gunmen stopped playing by the old rules. In the late 1990s and 2000, Sinaloa had its first rash of kidnappings of legitimate merchants and businessmen.

Phoenix first saw large numbers of ransom kidnappings reported during these years as well.

A fast-growing city, Phoenix had long been a destination for Mexican immigrants, and for Sinaloans in particular. Today, Phoenix detectives say, only the rare kidnapper is not from Sinaloa. They often come from the same Sinaloan towns: Los Mochis, Leyva, Guasave.

Like construction or restaurant work, kidnapping in Phoenix relies on cheap Mexican laborers. The grunt work, like guarding the victim, is often done by young, unemployed illegal immigrants, desperate for work, who sign on for $50 to $200 a day, Garcia said.

Certain Phoenix bars -- Señor Lucky's, Bronco Bar and El Gran Mercado -- are known as places where kidnappers recruit, much the way builders go to Home Depot to hire day laborers, police say.

The day Perez-Torres was kidnapped, police raided a south Phoenix tire shop and found shotguns, ammunition and ballistic vests.

The business belonged to a man they suspected of setting up a kidnapping and home-invasion empire. He recruited illegal immigrants, provided them with criminal work and a place to live at the shop, then would order them around like a small-town baron, police said. Occasionally he'd hit them and interrogate them.

Kidnapping in Phoenix attracts immigrants whose American dream is to make it big in the underworld. In Mexico, cartels limit their options. But cartel control is weak in Phoenix. Many resort to kidnapping because "for once, they're the guys with the gun, the ones with the power," Salgado said. "They are in control. In Mexico they're not in control."

It was 7 p.m. Friday. After several phone calls, the kidnappers ordered money to be taken to an intersection in west Phoenix.

Perez-Torres' family had come in that afternoon with $12,000, which they said was from selling cars.

So detectives lied.

"We told the suspect we do have the 150K," said Sgt. Phil Roberts, a unit supervisor. "We're going to tell him whatever he wants."

The case now passed to Salgado, who went undercover, accompanying Andres -- still posing as Perez-Torres' brother -- into west Phoenix.

Nine years ago, Salgado was the first Phoenix detective to investigate the smuggler kidnappings. He comforted the victim's family, negotiated, oversaw rescues. He learned to listen for compassion or cold-bloodedness.

For about a year, Salgado worked alone. The caseload grew incessantly. Today, probably no detective in America has worked more ransom kidnapping cases.

During an investigation, Salgado barely sleeps. When it's over, he crashes hard. Twice, dentists prescribed mouth guards to keep him from grinding his teeth. He chewed through each in a week.

To hear Salgado describe it, each kidnapping is like a jazz improvisation, with every move creating two or three new possibilities, which detectives must anticipate, depending on the suspect's tone of voice and what's come before.

"None are alike, and they're all the same," Salgado said. "You don't know what to expect, but you know what to expect."

With that in mind, Salgado set out that night in a pickup truck with Andres.

Few west Phoenix residents perceived the ballet of two unwitting suspects and dozens of officers that silently swept back and forth through their neighborhood.

Kidnappers called to tell Salgado and Andres to drive around with their windows down. They ordered them to stop at a gas station, then to get out and raise their shirts. Other officers watched from the shadows, giving them a wide berth.

For more than an hour kidnappers ordered Salgado and Andres through maneuvers, looking for signs of cops, apparently unaware of the undercover officers silently cruising the area looking for the kidnappers.

Then things happened fast. Officers were following a suspicious bronze Chevy truck, when the driver bolted down a residential street and into a driveway. Two men jumped out and ran. One dropped a gun.

Officers grabbed them after a short chase and before they could call their accomplices. If anything happened to Perez-Torres, officers said, they'd be charged with murder. The two men caved. He was being held, they said, in a house in Mesa, half an hour away.

A caravan of cops now sped for Mesa. They got there as three men were pushing Perez-Torres into a brown truck; a black Chrysler idled nearby. Both sped off but didn't get far. Police arrested three more men.

By 9:30, Juan Perez-Torres was safe, and five of his alleged kidnappers were about to be questioned.

They told detectives a bleak border tale.

Max Portillo, 24, said he'd been having trouble with a drug smuggler in Nogales, Mexico, known as "El Chueco" -- Twisted. El Chueco said Perez-Torres owed him for a load of marijuana, and he wanted someone to kidnap him.

Portillo said he recruited the others at bars. Another suspect, Abel Mosqueda, said he met Portillo at El Gran Mercado. Mosqueda told detectives he was out of work and needed money. Among the five of them, they had one gun: a black .45. They said they'd never kidnapped before.

How much of it was true? "That voice," Gina Garcia said, "I'm sure he's done this before from the way he conducted the negotiation."

But detectives hadn't time for the case's murky motives. They had the kidnappers' confessions and other evidence. Prosecutors had been getting plea-bargains of 12 years in prison for less. In a few months, they'd have trouble remembering the case.

Detectives now check victims for warrants and have dogs sniff ransom money for drugs, under the theory that today's victims are tomorrow's suspects. They've seized property valued at close to $1 million.

Phoenix police say they have never lost a victim during a rescue attempt. But detectives wondered how long their record would hold, and how long they could stave off the violence that has left more than 8,000 people dead in Mexico in the last two years.

"The way I understand it, the vice president of the Bank of Mexico has to go to work with armed escorts," Sgt. Roberts said. "The vice president of Wells Fargo in Phoenix does not. We're trying to prevent that from happening. If the United States as a whole doesn't do something about this, it's possible it could go that way."

About 4 a.m. Saturday, the family of Juan Francisco Perez-Torres huddled in the police lobby, waiting to drive him home. He denied smuggling drugs. Fixing and selling used cars was how he made his money, he said. No detective believed him.

Six hours later, Garcia finally went home. She hadn't slept in more than a day. Nonetheless, she had passed up a chance to move up to sergeant.

"It's good to save people, and it's good to put people away," she said.

The job was in Salgado's blood as well, and he couldn't quit it.

"The thing about kidnapping is," he said, "it's the only crime that's occurring as it's being investigated."

This one was now done.

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reposted from http://hotair.com/archives/2009/02/12/mexican-drug-cartels-make-phoenix-2-in-world-for-kidnappings/?print=1

Mexican Drug Cartels Make Phoenix The Kidnapping Capital Of America

Feb 12, 2009
by Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com


According to ABC News, the use of kidnapping by Mexican drug cartels for ransom and revenge has spread beyond the Rio Grande and into Arizona - and the federal government has done nothing to stop it. Phoenix has become the second-worst city in the world for kidnappings, right behind Mexico City, with brutal dismemberments for those abductees who do not get ransomed quickly enough:

QUOTE 

"In what officials caution is now a dangerous and even deadly crime wave, Phoenix Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone. But local authorities say Washington, DC is too obsessed with al Qaeda terrorists to care about what is happening in their own backyard right now.

"We’re in the eye of the storm," Phoenix Police Chief Andy Anderson told ABC News of the violent crimes and ruthless tactics spurred by Mexico’s drug cartels that have expanded business across the border. "If it doesn’t stop here, if we’re not able to fix it here and get it turned around, it will go across the nation," he said.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown warned that as the U.S. government focuses so intently on Islamic extremist groups, other types of terrorists "those involved with the same kidnappings, extortion and drug cartels that are sweeping Phoenix" are overlooked."

UNQUOTE

I understand about limited resources, but there simply is no excuse for government inaction on this front. First, the border should have been secured years ago to curtail the kind of access that the drug cartels have to American territory. Had we built the border wall, much of this kind of activity would have disappeared. Perhaps Jerry Brown should be asking his Democratic colleagues in Congress why they’ve de-prioritized that project, passed in 2005 and still barely even started.

In fact, if Congress wants a stimulus for infrastructure, the border wall would seem like a perfect project. It would employ people, improve national security, and help protect Phoenix from a plague of drug cartels. It will bolster our security infrastructure better than golf carts at the Pentagon, condoms for teenagers, and federal health care boards dictating treatment limits to doctors.

But Brown is right that this kind of activity is a form of terrorism inflicted on an American community by foreign forces. They differ from al Qaeda in that the drug cartels don’t plan to kill Americans on a large scale for political purposes, but the kidnapping, ransom, maiming, and murder of Phoenix residents for profit and/or revenge still qualifies as terrorism, regardless of the motivation behind it. The primary responsibility of the federal government is to protect the nation from outside attack - and if what ABC reports is accurate, it’s failing miserably in Phoenix.

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reposted from http://www.alipac.us/article3099.html

PHOENIX ARIZONA #2 IN WORLD FOR KIDNAPPINGS
Increase of Kidnappings Due To Influx of Illegal Immigrants


April 12, 2008
Gary Grado
East Valley Tribune


Lori Tapia and two of her employees laid bound on the bathroom floor of her Chandler restaurant with two instructions: Don’t go into the dining room and don’t call the police.

Outside in a car traveling Valley streets, her husband, Martin, lay on the rear floorboard under watch by four captors. They kept a hood over his head and a pistol pressed against his ribs.

The Gilbert couple, who had left teaching careers to open their restaurant, on Feb. 25 suddenly became part of a dangerous and burgeoning trend that has come to the Valley with the influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

Martin Tapia, like hundreds of others, was snatched by cells of kidnappers and held for ransom - a practice that has been less publicized than ones in which competing bands of human smugglers snatch each other’s cargo or hold hostages in drop houses to leverage higher fees.

"We were just third-party victims of a world we don’t belong in," Lori Tapia said.

Sgt. Phil Roberts, who oversees a portion of the Phoenix Police Department’s robbery unit, said his 17 detectives investigated 359 such kidnappings in 2007. And the trend has continued this year.

Mesa police also are beginning to see this type of kidnapping more regularly, said detective Chris Arvayo, police spokesman.

Roberts said the victims tend to be people from Mexico who have established themselves in the Valley by having a steady job or opening a business and are sometimes even U.S. citizens.

But Roberts said there are few innocent victims.

"We have yet to investigate a kidnapping where there has not been some drug-related involvement and/or coyote, human smuggling involvement with the victim," Roberts said. "It may not exactly be him (the victim) but a relative involved in the trade."

In the Tapias’ case, the connection to human smuggling came from a relative of Martin’s, who owed drug dealers money, according to a Chandler police report.

"You can’t pick your relatives," Lori Tapia said. "Martin is the pillar of his family, and they took him to get to her."

FOUR MEN WITH GUNS

The Tapias and their three children moved to the Valley three years ago from Douglas, where they taught at Cochise College and in the Douglas Unified School District.

They opened Ibiza Blue restaurant, a Hispanic nightclub at Alma School and Warner roads in Chandler, where the couple and their oldest son played as the house band.

The band, consisting of accordion, keyboards and drums, also performs at other bars and events.

It was about 2:15 p.m. Feb. 25 and the restaurant was closed when a group of men appeared. One asked to use the restroom, and Lori kept the others occupied at the door.

They left, but returned about 30 seconds later.

All four men had handguns and began barking orders, tying up Lori and her two employees and leaving with Martin. 

"The minute they came in that restaurant with those guns, they changed our lives," Lori said.

Martin doesn’t know where they took him, but he knows his captors were paranoid, looking around for police.

They took him to a house and placed him in a room with a mattress and an end table, where they explained that it was his relative’s drug debt they were trying to collect.

"They say, ‘The problem is not with you ... it’s just not your lucky day,’" Martin said.

Lori’s children found her and the employees in the restaurant about an hour later, and she had to convince her teenage daughter not to call the police. Lori had been instructed to wait for a phone call, but it never came.

She finally called Chandler police around 9:30 p.m.

According to a Chandler police report, investigators spent two days in the restaurant gathering fingerprints, and for 10 days followed leads and worked with Lori to find the kidnappers.

All the while, Lori had to convince the kidnappers she hadn’t called police.

To make sure she hadn’t, Martin’s abductors would seat him in front of the Spanish television news everyday at 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. and threaten to kill him if the kidnapping was reported.

Roberts said Phoenix police are able to rescue about 60 percent of the victims. The rest either escape, are released or the victim’s family gets impatient and stops cooperating.

It takes days and sometimes weeks for a rescue and an arrest, but it also takes cooperation of the family. Roberts said most investigations are successful when the family helps.

"We have never had a victim turn up dead," Roberts said.


HISTORY OF KIDNAPPING

Human rights groups consider Mexico one of the leaders in kidnapping in the world.

According to a 2007 human rights report by the U.S. State Department, "kidnapping remained a serious problem for persons of all socioeconomic levels" in Mexico.

Experts interviewed by the Tribune don’t believe the kidnappings plaguing the Valley are a matter of Mexican culture or tradition. Instead, they said the kidnappings have more to do with economics and politics.

Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent now president of Clayton Consultants, a company that helps individuals and companies resolve kidnappings in Mexico and around the world, said the economic disparities of Mexico and its high level of corruption are a "perfect storm" for kidnappers there.

Cloonan said there are traditional kidnap-for-ransom gangs that go back years, but they are now getting competition from drug cartels and other organized crime syndicates.

He said kidnapping is causing the middle class to flee Mexico.

Carlos Velez-Ibanez, an anthropologist and chairman of Arizona State University’s Department of Transborder Studies, said Mexican culture is based on mutual trust, so kidnapping violates all Mexican values.

Cloonan and Velez said the Valley’s kidnapping problems stem from the mingling of drug smuggling and human smuggling.

"It is the commoditization of people as objects to be bought and sold," Velez said. "It’s not Mexican - it has to do with the commodity."


INROADS IN MESA

Inquiries find East Valley cities have no where near the number of kidnappings that Phoenix has, but Mesa is beginning to get its share. 

For example, two gunmen in December walked into a beauty salon at Eighth Avenue and Alma School Road and forced owner Reynalda Valdez-Cardenas to go with them.

She was released four days later in Phoenix.

A month later, two men were kidnapped from a home in the 1200 block of East Elton Avenue, near Stapley Drive and Broadway Road.

They were roughed up before being released a few days later.

Both cases remain unsolved, and even though there were ransom demands, it is unclear why they were taken, Arvayo said.

"That’s one of the hard things about these cases - we’ll investigate and we’ll never find out what the exact reason is, even though all the players know," Arvayo said.

Mesa police did arrest Ramon Cabrera-Soto, 30, and Jose Sergio Espinoza-Vera, 35, on suspicion of kidnapping on March 10 after they lured Eric Galindo-Garnica to a house under the pretense he was going to repair a car for someone.

Galindo-Garnica told police Cabrera-Soto stuck a gun to his neck and Espinoza-Vera placed a hood over his head and forced him to the floor, according to court documents.

The kidnappers, strangers to Galindo-Garnica, then called his friend and brother and demanded $40,000 for his safe return.

He was able to escape a while later. 

"A few years ago you couldn’t say we were dealing with this on a regular basis," Arvayo said. "However, the city’s growing and it’s something we’re having to deal with."

Roberts said as the kidnapping problem has grown in Phoenix, other crimes that his unit investigates, such as all types of robberies, get less immediate attention.

Kidnapping requires immediate action and lots of manpower, he said.


LIVES IN THE BALANCE

Martin Tapia stood between two of his captors on March 6 as they argued about whether he should live or die.

Eventually, one pointed a gun at the other and said Martin would live.

A day before, Chandler police set up a sting in Phoenix in which a SWAT team swooped in during a money drop and arrested Arturo Torrez, 35, in Martin’s kidnapping.

One suspect got away.

Martin was dropped off at 23rd Street and Broadway Road in Phoenix and told to count to 1,000.

"I counted to 99," he said.

Martin decided not to prosecute Torrez, still in Maricopa County Jail awaiting transfer to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Even though Martin and the kidnappers developed a rapport, they made one thing clear when they let him go, Lori Tapia said.

"They said, ‘You stay out of our lives and we’ll stay out of yours,’" she said. "That’s why Martin made the choice not to press charges."

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For more up-to-date NEWS

America Facing A Judicial Meltdown

Even jury hiring is frozen.
To cut costs, New Hampshire courts won't hold criminal or civil jury trials for a month. At least 19 other states have slashed court budgets and other state services.

By Bob Drogin
December 22, 2008
L.A. Times
reposted from http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-courts22-2008dec22,0,387609.story


Reporting from Brentwood, N.H. -- Come February, the red-brick Rockingham County Courthouse, one of New Hampshire's busiest, will arraign criminal suspects, process legal motions and otherwise deal with murders, mayhem and contract disputes. What it won't do is hold jury trials.

The economic storm has come to this: Justice is being delayed or disrupted in state courtrooms across the country.

Financially strapped New Hampshire has become a poster child for the problem. Among other cost-cutting measures, state courts will halt for a month all civil and criminal jury trials early next year to save $73,000 in jurors' per diems. Officials warn they may add another four-week suspension.

"It brings our system almost to a screeching halt," said county prosecutor James M. Reams. His aides are scrambling to reschedule 77 criminal trials that were on the February docket.

"All the effort to subpoena witnesses and prepare for those trials is right out the window," Reams said, frustration in his voice. "Internally, it's a monumental waste of time. We'll have to redo everything."

At least 19 other states, including California, have slashed court budgets and other government services as their economies have tanked, said Daniel Hall, vice president of the National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit in Williamsburg, Va.

"Courts are there to provide a fair and impartial resolution of disputes," Hall said. "When you start affecting that, you affect who we are."

California cut its judicial branch budget by more than $200 million, or about 10%, in the current fiscal year, and further reductions are almost certain as the state grapples with a projected $40-billion deficit. A Republican proposal unveiled last week, for example, would trim a further $205 million from the judiciary.

H.D. Palmer, spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's finance department, said it was "not yet clear" whether the judiciary would be granted an exemption to the governor's order to reduce state payrolls by 10% through layoffs and unpaid furloughs.

Criminal defendants have a constitutional right to a speedy trial. Judges usually give such trials priority over civil cases involving broken sidewalks, medical malpractice and the like.

As a result, civil litigation and family law cases are bearing the brunt of the disruptions. And cascading bankruptcies, foreclosures and business disputes have only increased the backlog.

After two rounds of budget cuts in Florida, courts have laid off 280 clerks, lawyers and other staff members, and cut funding for a judges' unit that helps resolve civil disputes. State legislators meeting next month are expected to demand more spending cuts.

An additional 10% reduction would mean "all civil cases in the state of Florida would virtually be suspended," Belvin Perry Jr., chief judge of Florida's 9th Judicial Circuit and chairman of a trial court budget commission, warned a legislative committee in Tallahassee this month.


In Vermont, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul L. Reiber recently proposed closing as many as seven county courts, as well as laying off employees, to help ease a budget deficit. The state already shuts district and family courts half a day each week to save money.

"None of our choices are good," Reiber conceded in a memo to court employees.

With rising joblessness and falling revenues, New Hampshire projects a budget deficit this year of $250 million. The crisis has forced Gov. John Lynch to seek spending cuts across state government, including the judicial system.

John T. Broderick, chief justice of the state Supreme Court, has carved $2.7 million from the judicial budget. In addition to the one-month halt in jury trials and trimming back courtroom security, seven of the state's 59 judgeships will be left vacant through June, when the fiscal year ends. Three of the empty slots are in trial courts.

Worse, Broderick said, he may need to suspend jury trials for another month, and leave open a Supreme Court slot after one of the five justices retires in February. It is the state's only appellate court.

"In my 36 years here as a lawyer and judge, I've never felt as insecure about the state courts in terms of operations and resources as I do now," Broderick said.

Robert J. Lynn, chief justice of the superior courts, which conduct all New Hampshire jury trials, said he fears the delays inevitably will cause damage. "There is some element of 'justice delayed, justice denied,' no doubt about it," he said.

Christopher Keating, executive director of the New Hampshire Public Defender program, said his chief concern now is "people in custody who will endure delays in getting their day in court."

The state Supreme Court threw out two criminal cases this year because trials did not begin within six months of arraignment, the legal limit. Prosecutors fear more cases may be dismissed.

Delays in jury trials in 2001 and 2002, during a previous budget crisis, caused less disruption because they involved fewer cases, said John Safford, Superior Court clerk in the Hillsborough County district that includes Manchester, the largest city.

This time, he needs to reschedule up to 100 trials.

"I've been here 30 years," he said. "This is the worst I've ever seen it."

The delays may encourage some defendants to seek plea deals, or litigants to settle out of court.
Some counties are advocating out-of-court mediation and conflict resolution. But other cases may face new hurdles as time passes.

"Witnesses die, memories fade; things happen when trials are delayed," said John Hutson, dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center, the state's only law school. "Then you'll get a bow wave of cases, so they pile up the next month and it's hard to catch up."

The slowdown has unnerved many residents in the state, where granite-hewn courthouses often anchor Colonial-era town squares.

"You're talking about erosion of our fundamental civic fabric," said Ellen J. Shemitz, executive director of the New Hampshire Assn. for Justice, which represents civil trial attorneys.

James J. Tenn Jr., incoming president of the state's bar association, said that as the crisis has grown, New Hampshire courts have been slow to process orders, respond to lawyers' requests and "do the daily work."

"We've just seen delay after delay after delay," said David Slawsky, a civil lawyer in Manchester. "The court process is breaking down."

Dennis Ducharme, a Manchester attorney, received cancellation notices last week for four personal injury cases scheduled for trial next year. He worries that a delay of six months, perhaps longer, will make witnesses less willing to testify.

"The longer you drag it out, the more reluctant people become to cooperate," he said.

In Newport, in the rural west, lawyer Lisa Wellman-Ally has seen a property rights trial postponed four times. Each time, she has prepared 100 exhibits, re-subpoenaed witnesses, refreshed her arguments and billed her client for the time.

"Then we would get bounced again," she said.

No new trial date has been scheduled.

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For more up-to-date NEWS

J.A.I.L. News Journal
Judicial  Accountability  Initiative  Law

______________________________ ________________________
Los Angeles, CA                                         November 11, 2008

 

A Public Service Announcement to America

______________________________ ________________________

 

Where Is America Financially Headed?

 

By Ron Branson – National J.A.I.L. Commander-In-Chief 

VictoryUSA@jail4judges.org

 

Twelve years ago in 1996 this author wrote an article on where America was headed financially, and behold! he was extremely accurate as if written this year. At that time, J.A.I.L. (which was then called “The Judicial Reform Act of 1996") had neither a website, nor was connected with the internet. The article was merely distributed as a printed pamphlet.

 

Now the news reveals that Americans are giving their hard-earned money to bail out the bankers to the tune of $700,000,000 (seven hundred billion dollars). People are being laid off in droves from their jobs in the millions. People are losing their homes; they are watching their 401(k)s being depleted; and their retirements failing, all the while the banksters are wining and dining in pure luxury.

 

In yesterday's news (11/10/08) the AIG bank, (whose website www.AIGbank.com states, “Banking is now as easy as AIG!” and who has already reaped over a hundred billion dollars from the taxpayers in bail-out funds), is now claiming to be destitute of funds and asking for billions more in bail-out money from Congress. They have been caught living it up in riotous conditions at a confidential luxurious hotel, drinking, celebrating and making merry, including swimming, golf, massages, etc. --all at taxpayers' expense! These banksters are now avoiding the media who discovered them by using hidden cameras at this secret location.

 

The powers-that-be are even now looking to the heads of the Federal Reserve to come up with innovative ideas on how to save the economy from ruination, when it is precisely this same private Federal Reserve banker consortium that is at the helm of our economic woes.

 

Read the following and see if you agree that it appears that the below was written this very year instead of in 1996.

 

______________________________ _____________________

 

The Judicial Reform Act
vs.
The New World Order

* * *
The Final Showdown for America


The subject matter you are about to read is of utmost importance, barring religious and eternal values, inasmuch as it deals with a national emergency involving you and the future of your children and grandchildren. Whether you find it difficult to grasp or understand makes it of no less importance. This message is directed toward middle-class America, the wealthy, and to all who have ears to hear.

This publication consists of two parts: 1) The Problem: What is planned for your future; and 2) The Cure: What you can do to avert those plans. Give your undivided attention to what follows. Do not stop until you have finished. We are driving at a point you must not miss.

1) The Problem

"Permit me to issue a nation's money, and I care not who makes its laws."

--Meyer Anshelm Rothchild ~1780

Thomas Jefferson cautioned, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks ... will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Similarly, James Madison said, "History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance." Despite these warnings, the unthinkable happened.

On December 23, 1913, after Congress went home for Christmas, private bankers through craft, intrigue and deceit. indeed grasped control of the nation's currency, and thereby predestined the total collapse of America. Congress was told that the Federal Reserve Act would not be taken up until Congress returned after Christmas. As soon as the opposition left, those few congressmen, privy and complicit with the bankers' plans, stealthily brought the FRA to the floor (without a quorum) and quickly "passed" it. They then sent it posthaste in the middle of the night via a confidant of President Woodrow Wilson, who, having not read it, asked, "Is this a good bill?" Upon his friend affirming it was, the President signed it. After President Wilson realized the impact of what he had signed, he said, "I am a miserable man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. ... The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men."

Today, the Federal Reserve Board controlling our nation's "money" is 76% foreign owned by private interests. They have no allegiance whatsoever to America, as they think only in global profit$, nothing else! America is now controlled by a few very extremely wealthy globalists.

In the book Blueprint for Victory, we are told the bankers long ago planned our demise. Their plan is to gently lower your living standard, while juggling figures and presenting lying reports that "better days are coming," "prosperity is around the corner," "the economy is growing," and "unemployment is down," when the
truth is just the opposite.

In reality, the entire middle-class is planned to be obliterated, including you who are influential reading this. It is predetermined you be financially gutted. Your business is to be slowly depleted through "unfortunate" circumstances of debt foreclosure, bankruptcy, bad decisions, unable to meet tax obligations, poor business, and legislative control of your business and private property. It's not that these bankers don't believe in private ownership of property; they do. It is just a question of who owns it.

Remember when the average man graduated from school or college, got married, bought a new home, a new car, had a house full of children, was the sole bread-winner, (his wife stayed home and raised the children), he paid all his bills, and had plenty of money left over to put away into savings, and to plan for the future of his children? Today the average man graduates from school, gets married, rents a cheap apartment, buys a new car, both parents work full time outside the home, both struggle to pay the rent, utilities, baby sitter, car payments and insurance, and have nothing left over. Yet they're making more money than ever. Someone said, "I'm now making the money I used to dream of making on which I am now starving." Remember when "inflation" meant something you did to your bicycle tire?

Imagine for a moment the power of the Federal Reserve. They can shut down the housing market and cause all construction to cease with one phone call. They can just pick up the phone, place a call, and cause upheaval in the entire world market. They can send the stock market into a tailspin within minutes. They can bring about massive layoffs in all industries, or create a national depression at whim. They can do what no military power on earth can do, ruin the nation over the weekend and
never fire a shot. October 1929 was but an illustration. Multi-millionaires instantly became paupers. Rich men and CEOs jumped wholesale from skyscraper windows or off bridges, unable to cope with the "permanent prosperity" that had been assured them by President Hoover.

Congressman Charles A. Lindberg rightly said, "Under the Federal Reserve Act panics are scientifically created; the present is the first scientifically created one, worked out as we figure a mathematical problem." They turn the economy off and on like a faucet, and manipulate the stock market to their ends.

        CALLER to San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank public relations man, Ron Supinski, October 8, 1992: How many Federal Reserve Notes are in circulation?

SUPINSKI: $263 billion and we can only account for a small percentage.

CALLER: Where did they go?

SUPINSKI: People's mattresses, buried in their back yards and illegal drug money.

CALLER: Since the debt is payable in Federal Reserve Notes, how can the $4 trillion national debt be paid off with the total Federal Reserve Notes in circulation?

SUPINSKI: I don't know.

CALLER: If the Federal Government would collect every Federal Reserve Note in circulation, would it be mathematically possible to pay the $4 trillion national debt?

SUPINSKI: No. (Note: Is this not proof from the horse's mouth of inevitable national bankruptcy affecting everyone?)

The Banker's Manifest of 1892, as quoted from the book Economic Pinch by Charles Lindberg, Sr. says, "When through the process of law, the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and easily governed.... People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders."

In New Lies For Old by Anatoliy Golitsyn, it says the insiders themselves describe their goal as "the end of history." "This agenda has been followed systematically since the end of World War II, with no interruptions in strategy and only occasional
shifts and tactics. What may appear to be rapidly unfolding events are in fact policies of long standing."

2) The Cure --America's Only Hope-- 

Judicial Accountability and Integrity Legislation (J.A.I.L.)

"Permit the People direct control over immunity of a nation's judiciary, and I care not who makes the money."
    - 
Ronald Branson -- 1996

While hard to grasp, it is nonetheless true. There is no future hope for America outside the principles set forth in 
[J.A.I.L.]  It has been called the most important proposed legislation in the last 200 years dating back to the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence.  [J.A.I.L.]  is a workable and peaceable means by which the People will begin to regain control and accountability over their government, starting with California.  [J.A.I.L.]  creates Special Grand Juries that will exclusively investigate the misconduct of all judges of your State.  [J.A.I.L.]  will influence every state in the union, and will become the stepping-stone to federal judicial reform.

The only thing the Federal Reserve Bankers fear is a "rogue" federal judge ruling in favor of a constitutional challenge of their monetary system. The Constitution prohibits private control of our nation's money by mandating, "Congress shall ... coin money, regulate the value thereof." Article I, Section 8. The bankers, therefore, must maintain their control of five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue. When they lose that, the People will regain their freedom and the New World Order will lose its stranglehold.

Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has been constantly under attack through court action, and the federal judges have continuously ruled for the bankers. The Banker's Manifest acknowledges, "The courts must be called to our aid." Without bankers controlling the courts, they know the banking fraud is over. The key to America's victory, and your children's future then, is in the creation of a unique Special U.S. Grand Jury after the order of 
[J.A.I.L.]  with one sole purpose: to hold all federal judges directly accountable to the People. This Grand Jury will be autonomous and without government control of any kind. These Grand Jurors shall have complete authority to strip any federal judge of immunity, should they continue to cover for the bankers, violating their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

NATIONAL EMERGENCY
J.A.I.L. vs. NWO draws a battle line for national survival, a cause for which we cannot give up and must not lose. 
[J.A.I.L.]  is proposed legislation with immutable truth that will never die! It will ever be present and persistent, urging itself as the only answer to government out of control. Democrats support it; Republicans support it; Independents support it; so do liberals and conservatives. Police support it; lawyers support it; and yes, even some honest judges are confidentially supporting it, knowing corrupt judges make it hard for honest judges to be honest.

The  [J.A.I.L.]  Initiative was filed November 30, 1995. Our first attempt to gather a million signatures and qualify it was done entirely by volunteers. Through experience we are forced to reckon with the fact that volunteers alone cannot do it. We must raise the money to bring it to pass. It may be encouraging to some of you to consider that freedom is only a matter of a money investment in your children's future. Our challenge before us then is, can we who love America and freedom, raise the money to pass  [J.A.I.L.]  before the New World Order depletes us of our property, our assets and our wealth, leaving us with nothing by which we may oppose them?

What's the Bid for your Children's Future? Our plan of action is getting people to sponsor blocks of signatures which will collectively total somewhere over a million signatures at one dollar apiece. This may seem a lot to most of us, however, consider the alternative. We stand to lose everything. Collectively, we can do it. It begins with you buying the first block. How much will you bid for freedom? Do I hear 25 signatures? 50 signatures? 100 signatures? 250 signatures? 500 signatures? 1,000 signatures? 5,000 signatures? 10,000 signatures? "Nothing" is not an answer! Freedom is not FREE.

 

This is an emergency. Your future, your children, your assets, your country, everything rests upon you! Don't wait for the other guy to finance your freedom. If you do, everyone loses. Don't gamble with your future! How many signatures will you sponsor? Decide and write a check, even if it's a small check; but write a check now. "For lack of a nail, a shoe was lost. For lack of a shoe, a horse was lost. For lack of a horse, the battle was lost." We must not lose America for want of a nail. If  [J.A.I.L.] doesn't prevail, we ask that you take down the flag furling over Arlington Cemetery, and turn out the lights shining on the Statue of Liberty.

This is a call to duty to all you patriotic Americans who love your Country. If not now, When? If not us, Who?

Ten years later we added the following:

 

Where are we today besides the name JRA having been changed to J.A.I.L.? Not being able to raise the funds necessary to sponsor the Initiative in California, we have now, ten years later, targeted the State of South Dakota for passage in 2006. The Initiative was filed there twelve days ago, on May 27, 2005 with the Secretary of State, and notification from the State is imminently expected.

I repeat the challenge made ten years ago: Can we who love America and freedom, raise the money to pass [J.A.I.L.] before the New World Order depletes us of our property, our assets and our wealth, leaving us with nothing by which we may oppose them? …. Thanks for your support in extracting America from the grip of the bankers and the NWO.

 

*   *   *

PS – We are even now hearing the financial prognosticators prophesying that the market bottom should hit around the middle of 2009 before the economy turns around and prosperity follows. Don’t you believe it! The very same greedy financial influences that brought us to where we are today are still at play; and these banksters shall not cease until they own the very soil on which you are standing. Your only purpose to them for existence is to bring in the fruits of your labor into their coffers. Believe me, “…a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” Luke 6:43; and “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” Jeremiah 13:23.

 

 


 

J.A.I.L. (Judicial Accountability Initiative Law)  has been in existence for over 12 years, and is in all 50 states and several foreign countries.

Our Founding Fathers said, "...with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Dec. of Independence. We are a ministry in great need of your financial support. Donate to this vitally important work at;

 

"J.A.I.L.

P.O. Box 207,

North Hollywood, CA 91603

 

J.A.I.L. is a unique addition to our Constitution heretofore unrealized.

JAIL is powerful! JAIL is dynamic! JAIL is America's ONLY hope!

 

 

*   *   *

 

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to

our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to

their acts of pretended legislation.    - Declaration of Independence
 
"..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless

minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.."  - Samuel Adams
 
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is

striking at the root."   -- Henry David Thoreau                     ><)))'>

 

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For more up-to-date NEWS

9/11 Victims Families Lawsuit Thrown Out:
Saudi Arabia Cannot Be Sued For Funding Acts Of Terrorism


By Chris Mondics (cmondics@phillynews.com)
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Fri, Aug. 15, 2008
reposted from http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080815_Cozen_O_Connor_dealt_blow_in_9_11_lawsuit.html


An ambitious lawsuit by the Philadelphia firm of Cozen O'Connor blaming the government of Saudi Arabia for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was dealt a sharp setback yesterday when a federal appeals court ruled that the desert kingdom could not be sued for acts of terrorism.

The ruling followed years of hard-fought litigation in which lawyers for Cozen and other firms representing Sept. 11 victims traveled the globe tracking down witnesses with information about how Saudi money found its way to al Qaeda. (click here for who leaked this intel. )

Yet, in a stinging setback for Cozen and other plaintiffs' lawyers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said U.S. law bars such lawsuits "unless the State Department [finds a foreign] government provided material support for terrorist groups."

The State Department has made no such finding regarding Saudi Arabia.

The law does not "delegate to the victims, their counsel or the courts the responsibility of the executive branch to make America's foreign-policy response to acts of terrorism," said the opinion, written by Dennis Jacobs, chief judge of the Second Circuit, based in Manhattan.

The court made no finding on facts included in the lawsuits that the law firms have contended tie the Saudi government to funding for al Qaeda.

The ruling came in an appeal of a lower-court opinion filed by Cozen O'Connor on behalf of insurers that paid out billions in claims to businesses at ground zero. Cozen was joined in the legal action by law firms representing hundreds of individual victims and survivors and various other commercial interests that suffered losses.

Cozen and other law firms have spent millions in the high-profile action and have been working on the case almost from the day the attacks were carried out.

They alleged that the Saudi government funded Islamic charities that in turn became money-laundering conduits for al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Absent that funding, the lawsuits said, al Qaeda never would have emerged as a global threat.

The Saudi Arabian Embassy and members of its legal team declined to comment on the ruling yesterday, citing the possibility of further legal action.

In legal papers, lawyers for the kingdom argued that there was no credible evidence that senior Saudi officials had any knowledge of terrorism activities by the charities nor that they intended for the charities to finance al Qaeda.

But lawyers for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks reacted sharply to the decision.

"I have great respect for this panel, but I could not disagree more with their analysis or reasoning," said a clearly frustrated Stephen Cozen, who had argued the case in January before the Second Circuit. "It just seems to be totally wrong to us to have a decision be made on who gets immunity and who does or does not get immunity, based not on law but because of political decisions made by the diplomatic corps."

Cozen said he was recommending to his insurance-industry clients that they appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. But such appeals typically are uphill battles; the Supreme Court traditionally has accorded great deference to circuit court decisions.

The plaintiffs have 90 days to file an appeal. They also have the option of asking for a rehearing of the case by the Second Circuit.

"We believe that the court was wrong in its interpretation of the law," said Jerry S. Goldman, a lawyer for Anderson, Kill & Olick P.C. Goldman is representing the estate of John O'Neill Sr., a former Atlantic City resident and top antiterrorism official with the FBI who was serving as head of security at the World Trade Center and died in the attacks.

"Under the court's rationale, were a New Yorker to be sideswiped by a car driven by an employee of the Saudi Embassy, they could sue for bumps and bruises. Yet nearly 3,000 families of those innocents who were brutally killed in Lower Manhattan cannot pursue their claims."

The Second Circuit ruling upheld two lower-court decisions in 2005 by late federal District Judge Richard Conway Casey, saying that the government of Saudi Arabia, senior Saudi royals - Princes Naif, Sultan, Salman, Turki and Mohamed - could not be sued because they were protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

Casey also ruled that the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina, established by the Saudi government in 1993 to provide aid to Muslim refugees caught up in the Balkans war and accused by the plaintiffs of being a money-laundering conduit for al Qaeda, also was immune.

In finding that the royals and the government were immune from suit, the Second Circuit pointed to a 1996 amendment to the sovereign-immunities act, written by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), permitting U.S. citizens to file suit against foreign governments for terrorists acts that occur overseas.

Called the Flatow Amendment, after a 20-year-old New Jersey woman named Alisa Flatow who was killed in a suicide bombing in 1995 in Gaza, the law restricted terrorism lawsuits to governments that had been designated as state sponsors of terrorism.

White House and State Department officials, fearing that a flood of lawsuits from U.S. citizens might interfere with the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, had insisted on that restriction in return for their support.

Yet lawyers for the plaintiffs insisted yesterday that the designation requirement was intended only to establish one avenue for suing foreign governments. They said the Second Circuit, by failing to acknowledge other legal options provided by the act, had turned back the clock to an era when executive branch officials alone made the decision on whether U.S. citizens could sue foreign governments.

"This puts us back into the 1950s," Cozen said.

In their lawsuits, Cozen and other law firms allege that over a period of a decade or more, officials of the government of Saudi Arabia had financed Islamic charities that in turn had become the sources of funding for Islamic terrorists, first in Afghanistan and the Sudan and then later in the Bosnia-Herzegovina, and ultimately in the Sept. 11 attacks.

-------------------------------------------
Read an Inquirer series on the lawsuit, plus yesterday's ruling and other court documents, at http://go.philly.com/cozen


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For more up-to-date NEWS

53 Criminal Cases Dismissed in California Due To Lack Of Judges

By Richard K. DeAtley (rdeatley@PE.com)
The Press-Enterprise
Friday, August 8, 2008
reposted from http://www.pe.com/localnews/rivcounty/stories/PE_News_Local_S_dismiss09.407c967.html


Twenty-two criminal cases were dismissed in Riverside County [CA, in July] because no judge was available to hear them, court records show.

It was the most criminal-case dismissals in that category for a single month since court officials started keeping records of them in 2007.

Eight of the dismissed cases were felonies that were immediately refilled by the district attorney's office. Misdemeanor cases cannot be refilled unless the dismissal is reversed on appeal.

At least 53 criminal cases have been dismissed since January 2007 because of time limits, according to a list released by the courts.

There may have been more.


The district attorney's office says its own records show 58 such dismissals for 2007 and 2008, and that prosecutors refilled almost all of the felony cases. The DA's office has not yet talked to the court to reconcile the discrepancy.

Last month's dismissals came after the June departure of a special six-member temporary judicial strike force.

Five open judgeships also went unfilled for most of the month, and funding for seven new county judges was delayed for a year because of the state's fiscal crisis.

Some July days had 12 to 15 judicial benches empty throughout the county, said Riverside County Presiding Judge Richard Fields.

It also was the beginning of the seasonal low point for availability of temporary judges, a pool of retired jurists who serve throughout the state.

In the 2007-08 fiscal year, Riverside County used the temporary judges, including strike force judges, for nearly 9 percent of the time they were available, the state Judicial Council estimated.

But other counties facing a squeeze on their judiciary also need the temporary judges.

"All of those factors are putting a real crimp on judicial resources in Riverside County," said Assistant Public Defender Robert Willey. "The strike force leaving effectively shut down six trial courts."

The strike force was sent by California Chief Justice Ronald George to hear the county's oldest active criminal cases.

Riverside County has one of the state's most congested court calendars. The county is estimated to need 57 more judicial positions than its current complement of 76 judges and commissioners. The county's population has exploded in the past decade to more than 2 million.

Criminal cases must be heard within a certain number of days or be dismissed because the constitution guarantees defendants speedy trials. The deadline varies between felonies and misdemeanors.

Until funding was delayed by one year due to the $15.2 billion state budget shortfall, the county planned on getting seven judgeships that would coincidentally replace the departing judicial task force.

"We figured there would be no loss," Fields said. "But then we did not get those judges, and there were five other vacancies from retirements and one commissioner position being elevated to a judgeship," he said.

Gov. Schwarzenegger appointed three judges July 21, but Fields said only one, former Deputy District Attorney Jack Lucky, was able to take the bench quickly, "and he is already on his second trial," Fields said.

"We can be grateful that the governor has filled the three vacancies last month. That should give some help, but it's a snowflake falling on a bed of snow," Chief Assistant District Attorney Sue Steding said.

She said her office agreed that the departure of the strike force judges and the one-year delay on funding for new judges would hurt the system.

Fields said the court's new scheduling system, introduced March 17, was reducing the backlog of criminal cases. He said the July dismissals were "out of context with the progress. The bubble in July was anticipated."

The number of pending criminal cases has gone from 2,271 cases to 1,381 since March, he said.

The court's list of dismissals so far in August looks the same as early July's, with four cases tossed by Tuesday, three of them felonies that were refilled.

Steding said two of the dismissed August felonies were cases started under the new scheduling system, but she declined to comment specifically.

"The whole new system is a work in progress, and we need to keep watching," she said.

Assemblyman John J. Benoit, R-Bermuda Dunes, who has been monitoring the court situation in Riverside County, said a quick fix to get more judges is not in the future. He said he had met with Chief Justice George as recently as Wednesday on the matter.

"We don't have what we need, but we are going to have to deal with it and do the best job we can," said Benoit.


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California Supreme Court Fears Existence of JAIL4Judges

By Ron Branson 
National J.A.I.L. CIC


In April of 2006 I was contacted by the Los Angeles Times. On the other end was a reporter named Jessica Garrison. She asked me if I knew who Ronald George was. I responded yes, and told her that he was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California. She acknowledged that I was correct, and said that I just got off the phone with him, and he says he knows you. I told her that I was impressed, but that he has nothing good to say about me, for he is already in the media saying that I am out to destroy this wonderful judicial system we have here in California.

An earlier publication found at http://www.jail4judges.org/JNJ_Library/2006/2006-11-09.html 
reveals Ronald George jumping up and down with glee at the defeat of J.A.I.L. in South Dakota, "Chief Justice Ronald M. George yesterday hailed the resounding defeat of a South Dakota ballot initiative that would have eliminated judicial immunity by constitutional amendment."

We are told at http://blog.netesq.com/2005/11/jail-for-judges-judicial.html 
"California Chief Justice Ronald George and Missouri Chief Justice Michael Wolff have expressed concern about the South Dakota campaign and the larger J.A.I.L. movement."

In Ronald George's 2007 State of the Judiciary message, http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/reference/soj022607.htm
he stated, "In South Dakota last fall, an initiative measure placed on the ballot would have abolished the immunity of judges from lawsuits, making them personally subject to monetary damages and even criminally liable..."

In another newspaper, (Sacramento Bee), it says, "California Chief Justice Ronald George has described J.A.I.L as 'a threat to judicial independence.' "

But on July 11, 2008, another California Supreme Court Justice jumps in expressing his fear of JAIL4Judges - Justice Ming Chin

-Ron Branson
VictoryUSA@jail4judges.org 

_____________________________
(** Admin note: Notice in the news report below that Judge Ming Chin is the one who made the claim, NOT JURISTS.)

Jurists Say Judges Face 'Unfair Political Attacks'

July 10, 2008
by Scott Sabatini


reposted from http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/214073-jurists-say-judges-face-unfair-political-attacks

SACRAMENTO, CA -- Justice Ron Robie of California Court of Appeals pointed to a recent political ad as an example of the type of newfound pressure upon judges from special interest groups.

The ad, which pictures three judges dancing in the pocket of a businessman, says simply, "Where are my judges?" Robie told Legal Newsline this week.

"These are extremely negative kinds of advertising," Robie said.

Robie is a member of California's Commission on Impartial Courts, a wide-ranging committee broken down into four task forces, each looking for answers to what many believe is an epidemic of political pressure on judges.

"Courts throughout the country are facing unfair political attacks that threaten to weaken our democracy and jeopardize every American's right to equal access to justice," said California Supreme Court Justice Ming Chin, chair of the impartial courts commission.

Robie agrees with Chin that things have changed dramatically in recent years.

"The last several years have been extravagant campaigns against judges, sponsored by major interest groups - trial lawyers, labor, business groups - so it's the full spectrum," Robie said.

Influence On Judges

In an interview Wednesday, Chin said that while California remains mostly free of the influences that have run rampant in some other states, the commission is determined to develop a broad range of strategies to protect the Golden State's courts.

"We don't want to take it for granted what we have now in California," Chin said.

Several other states have seen the rise of legislation that Chin believes would have a disastrous impact on the judicial branch of government.

"Jail for judges" legislation failed in South Dakota, Chin said, but the organizers of the legislation tried to also qualify it in California. Colorado faced term-limit legislation that would have removed three of the seven sitting state Supreme Courts and 40 percent of the court of appeal judges. Oregon has voted on similar legislation in recent years.

"We didn't feel that it would be prudent not to be prepared if (similar legislation was) brought to California," Chin said.

In the simplest terms, voters need to evaluate judges differently that the divisive, issue-driven campaigns familiar with other elected officials, Chin said.

He ticked off the standard for evaluating judges, including commitment to the rule of law, the ability to listen impartially to the face of a case and then the courage to apply the law to those facts, "regardless of his or her opinion on the issue," Chin said.

But when donors wave huge piles of money to bolster the candidacy of a judge solely on party affiliation or a judge's opinion on controversial issues, it will be increasingly difficult for judges to impartially apply the law.

"The huge sum of money now required in many states in judicial elections has changed things," Chin said. "We are more concerned about the influence of money. How are you going to maintain an impartial court when judges have to raise large sums of money to get elected?"

Judges must apply the law, Chin said, regardless of their personal opinion or worse, the political pressure applied by special interest groups.

"You can't raise your hand and test the political wind. You have to apply the law," Chin said.

Robie said the increase in campaign funds in political elections "opens the door to more issue-oriented judges. It makes judicial campaigning very expensive, and it makes it difficult for judges to talk about meaningful issues to voters."

Recommendations For California

The Commission on Impartial Courts will hold a public hearing Monday that will include testimony from former California governors, legal experts and heads of the state bar and judges associations.

The information gathered in the hearing along with work done by the four task forces - judicial section and retention, judicial campaign conduct, judicial campaign finance and public information and education - will be presented to the Judicial Council of California for review and implementation.

Christine Patton, regional director with the administration office of the court, said an interim report will be presented to the judicial council at its Aug. 15 meeting. A final report will be due in June 2009, Patton said.

In addition to public testimony, research and recommendations from each task force, the commission will partner with the Public Policy Institute for polling data, Patton said.

Recommendations are expected to include ways to educate voters about the importance of impartial judges.

"We think the public is sort of in the dark about the judicial branch," Robie said, "and we are looking for ways to help them understand on important things to evaluate when voting."

Chin said part of that education involves properly vetting judge candidates. Several judges on ballots in recent years have been deemed "not qualified" by the Judicial Nominee Evaluation. Patton said that any judge appointed by the governor has to be deemed qualified. But many on local ballots do not.

"We are thinking of changing that," Chin said, "and making it mandatory for all who run for judge seats."

Campaign finance issues present, perhaps, the largest challenge for the commission, Chin said.

"Campaign finance is such a difficult area; It's a struggle," he said.

Patton said the campaign finance task force is hoping to weed through potential solutions to recommend the most effective ways to limit the influence of campaign funding.

The forum will be held from 9:30 until noon in the auditorium of the Secretary of State Building, 1500 11th Street, Sacramento. 

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Gun Control's Twisted Outcome:
Restricting Firearms Make England More Crime-Ridden Than U.S.


by Joyce Lee Malcolm 
November 2002 
reposted from http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html


On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder, "theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article's battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."

In the two years since Dan Rather was so roundly rebuked, violence in England has gotten markedly worse. Over the course of a few days in the summer of 2001, gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of north London. And on New Year's Day this year a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east London was shot in the head by a thief who wanted her mobile phone. London police are now looking to New York City police for advice.

None of this was supposed to happen in the country whose stringent gun laws and 1997 ban on handguns have been hailed as the "gold standard" of gun control. For the better part of a century, British governments have pursued a strategy for domestic safety that a 1992 Economist article characterized as requiring "a restraint on personal liberty that seems, in most civilised countries, essential to the happiness of others," a policy the magazine found at odds with "America's Vigilante Values." The safety of English people has been staked on the thesis that fewer private guns means less crime. The government believes that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger, and that disarming them lessens the chance that criminals will get or use weapons.

The results -- the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy -- are credited by the world's gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell reflected this conventional wisdom when, in a 1988 speech to the American Bar Association, he attributed England's low rates of violent crime to the fact that "private ownership of guns is strictly controlled."

In reality, the English approach has not reduced violent crime. Instead it has left law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would be a public safety disaster for the United States.

The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England's firearms restrictions "seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.

Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.

Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

This sea change in English crime followed a sea change in government policies. Gun regulations have been part of a more general disarmament based on the proposition that people don't need to protect themselves because society will protect them. It also will protect their neighbors: Police advise those who witness a crime to "walk on by" and let the professionals handle it.

This is a reversal of centuries of common law that not only permitted but expected individuals to defend themselves, their families, and their neighbors when other help was not available. It was a legal tradition passed on to Americans. Personal security was ranked first among an individual's rights by William Blackstone, the great 18th-century exponent of the common law. It was a right, he argued, that no government could take away, since no government could protect the individual in his moment of need. A century later Blackstone's illustrious successor, A.V. Dicey, cautioned, "discourage self-help and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians."

But modern English governments have put public order ahead of the individual's right to personal safety. First the government clamped down on private possession of guns; then it forbade people to carry any article that might be used for self-defense; finally, the vigor of that self-defense was to be judged by what, in hindsight, seemed "reasonable in the circumstances."

The 1920 Firearms Act was the first serious British restriction on guns. Although crime was low in England in 1920, the government feared massive labor disruption and a Bolshevik revolution. In the circumstances, permitting the people to remain armed must have seemed an unnecessary risk. And so the new policy of disarming the public began. The Firearms Act required a would-be gun owner to obtain a certificate from the local chief of police, who was charged with determining whether the applicant had a good reason for possessing a weapon and was fit to do so. All very sensible. Parliament was assured that the intention was to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous persons. Yet from the start the law's enforcement was far more restrictive, and Home Office instructions to police -- classified until 1989 -- periodically narrowed the criteria.

At first police were instructed that it would be a good reason to have a revolver if a person "lives in a solitary house, where protection against thieves and burglars is essential, or has been exposed to definite threats to life on account of his performance of some public duty." By 1937 police were to discourage applications to possess firearms for house or personal protection. In 1964 they were told "it should hardly ever be necessary to anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person" and that "this principle should hold good even in the case of banks and firms who desire to protect valuables or large quantities of money."

In 1969 police were informed "it should never be necessary for anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person." These changes were made without public knowledge or debate. Their enforcement has consumed hundreds of thousands of police hours. Finally, in 1997 handguns were banned. Proposed exemptions for handicapped shooters and the British Olympic team were rejected.

Even more sweeping was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, which made it illegal to carry in a public place any article "made, adapted, or intended" for an offensive purpose "without lawful authority or excuse." Carrying something to protect yourself was branded antisocial. Any item carried for possible defense automatically became an offensive weapon. Police were given extensive power to stop and search everyone. Individuals found with offensive items were guilty until proven innocent.

During the debate over the Prevention of Crime Act in the House of Commons, a member from Northern Ireland told his colleagues of a woman employed by Parliament who had to cross a lonely heath on her route home and had armed herself with a knitting needle. A month earlier, she had driven off a youth who tried to snatch her handbag by jabbing him "on a tender part of his body." Was it to be an offense to carry a knitting needle? The attorney general assured the M.P. that the woman might be found to have a reasonable excuse but added that the public should be discouraged "from going about with offensive weapons in their pockets; it is the duty of society to protect them."

Another M.P. pointed out that while "society ought to undertake the defense of its members, nevertheless one has to remember that there are many places where society cannot get, or cannot get there in time. On those occasions a man has to defend himself and those whom he is escorting. It is not very much consolation that society will come forward a great deal later, pick up the bits, and punish the violent offender."

In the House of Lords, Lord Saltoun argued: "The object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength and it is this ability that the bill was framed to destroy. I do not think any government has the right, though they may very well have the power, to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend themselves." But he added: "Unless there is not only a right but also a fundamental willingness amongst the people to defend themselves, no police force, however large, can do it."

That willingness was further undermined by a broad revision of criminal law in 1967 that altered the legal standard for self-defense. Now everything turns on what seems to be "reasonable" force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law."

The original common law standard was similar to what still prevails in the U.S. Americans are free to carry articles for their protection, and in 33 states law-abiding citizens may carry concealed guns. Americans may defend themselves with deadly force if they believe that an attacker is about to kill or seriously injure them, or to prevent a violent crime. Our courts are mindful that, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an upraised knife."

But English courts have interpreted the 1953 act strictly and zealously. Among articles found illegally carried with offensive intentions are a sandbag, a pickaxe handle, a stone, and a drum of pepper. "Any article is capable of being an offensive weapon," concede the authors of Smith and Hogan Criminal Law, a popular legal text, although they add that if the article is unlikely to cause an injury the onus of proving intent to do so would be "very heavy."

The 1967 act has not been helpful to those obliged to defend themselves either. Granville Williams points out: "For some reason that is not clear, the courts occasionally seem to regard the scandal of the killing of a robber as of greater moment than the safety of the robber's victim in respect of his person and property."

A sampling of cases illustrates the impact of these measures:
  • In 1973 a young man running on a road at night was stopped by the police and found to be carrying a length of steel, a cycle chain, and a metal clock weight. He explained that a gang of youths had been after him. At his hearing it was found he had been threatened and had previously notified the police. The justices agreed he had a valid reason to carry the weapons. Indeed, 16 days later he was attacked and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. But the prosecutor appealed the ruling, and the appellate judges insisted that carrying a weapon must be related to an imminent and immediate threat. They sent the case back to the lower court with directions to convict.
  • In 1987 two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive, in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, "My air supply was being cut off, my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life." In desperation he unsheathed an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers, stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding. Butler (the victim) was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.
  • In 1994 an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house while he called the police. When the officers arrived, they arrested the homeowner (the victim) for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate. In a similar incident the following year, when an elderly woman fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths who were threatening her, she was arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the police are pressing Parliament to make imitation guns illegal.
  • In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted 5,000 British pounds of legal assistance to sue Martin.


The failure of English policy to produce a safer society is clear, but what of British jibes about "America's vigilante values" and our much higher murder rate?

Historically, America has had a high homicide rate and England a low one. In a comparison of New York and London over a 200-year period, during most of which both populations had unrestricted access to firearms, historian Eric Monkkonen found New York's homicide rate consistently about five times London's. Monkkonen pointed out that even without guns, "the United States would still be out of step, just as it has been for two hundred years."

Legal historian Richard Maxwell Brown has argued that Americans have more homicides because English law insists an individual should retreat when attacked, whereas Americans believe they have the right to stand their ground and kill in self-defense. Americans do have more latitude to protect themselves, in keeping with traditional common law standards, but that would have had less significance before England's more restrictive policy was established in 1967.

The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn't subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible.

The London-based Office of Health Economics, after a careful international study, found that while "one reason often given for the high numbers of murders and manslaughters in the United States is the easy availability of firearms...the strong correlation with racial and socio-economic variables suggests that the underlying determinants of the homicide rate are related to particular cultural factors."

Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America's has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.

Preliminary figures for the U.S. this year show an increase, although of less than 1 percent, in the overall number of violent crimes, with homicide increases in certain cities, which criminologists attribute to gang violence, the poor economy, and the release from prison of many offenders. Yet Americans still enjoy a substantially lower rate of violent crime than England, without the "restraint on personal liberty" English governments have seen as necessary. Rather than permit individuals more scope to defend themselves, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government plans to combat crime by extending those "restraints on personal liberty": removing the prohibition against double jeopardy so people can be tried twice for the same crime, making hearsay evidence admissible in court, and letting jurors know of a suspect's previous crimes.

This is a cautionary tale. America's founders, like their English forebears, regarded personal security as first of the three primary rights of mankind. That was the main reason for including a right for individuals to be armed in the U.S. Constitution. Not everyone needs to avail himself or herself of that right. It is a dangerous right. But leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous.

The English government has effectively abolished the right of Englishmen, confirmed in their 1689 Bill of Rights, to "have arms for their defense," insisting upon a monopoly of force it can succeed in imposing only on law-abiding citizens. It has come perilously close to depriving its people of the ability to protect themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society. Despite the English tendency to decry America's "vigilante values," English policy makers would do well to consider a return to these crucial common law values, which stood them so well in the past. 

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reposted from:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/america/23prison.php

  U.S. Prison Population Dwarfs Other Nation's


By Adam Liptak
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 


The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes - from writing bad checks to using drugs - that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China's extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

San Marino, with a population of about 30,000, is at the end of the long list of 218 countries compiled by the center. It has a single prisoner.

The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

There is little question that the high incarceration rate here has helped drive down crime, though there is debate about how much.

Criminologists and legal experts here and abroad point to a tangle of factors to explain America's extraordinary incarceration rate: higher levels of violent crime, harsher sentencing laws, a legacy of racial turmoil, a special fervor in combating illegal drugs, the American temperament, and the lack of a social safety net. Even democracy plays a role, as judges - many of whom are elected, another American anomaly - yield to populist demands for tough justice.

Whatever the reason, the gap between American justice and that of the rest of the world is enormous and growing.

It used to be that Europeans came to the United States to study its prison systems. They came away impressed.

"In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States," Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured American penitentiaries in 1831, wrote in "Democracy in America."

No more.

"Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror," James Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. "Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons."

Prison sentences here have become "vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared," Michael Tonry, a leading authority on crime policy, wrote in "The Handbook of Crime and Punishment."

Indeed, said Vivien Stern, a research fellow at the prison studies center in London, the American incarceration rate has made the United States "a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach."

The spike in American incarceration rates is quite recent. From 1925 to 1975, the rate remained stable, around 110 people in prison per 100,000 people. It shot up with the movement to get tough on crime in the late 1970s. (These numbers exclude people held in jails, as comprehensive information on prisoners held in state and local jails was not collected until relatively recently.)

The nation's relatively high violent crime rate, partly driven by the much easier availability of guns here, helps explain the number of people in American prisons.

"The assault rate in New York and London is not that much different," said Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group. "But if you look at the murder rate, particularly with firearms, it's much higher."

Despite the recent decline in the murder rate in the United States, it is still about four times that of many nations in Western Europe.

But that is only a partial explanation. The United States, in fact, has relatively low rates of nonviolent crime. It has lower burglary and robbery rates than Australia, Canada and England.

People who commit nonviolent crimes in the rest of the world are less likely to receive prison time and certainly less likely to receive long sentences. The United States is, for instance, the only advanced country that incarcerates people for minor property crimes like passing bad checks, Whitman wrote.

Efforts to combat illegal drugs play a major role in explaining long prison sentences in the United States as well. In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American jails and prisons for drug crimes. These days, there are almost 500,000.

Those figures have drawn contempt from European critics. "The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism," said Stern of King's College.

Many American prosecutors, on the other hand, say that locking up people involved in the drug trade is imperative, as it helps thwart demand for illegal drugs and drives down other kinds of crime. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, for instance, has fought hard to prevent the early release of people in federal prison on crack cocaine offenses, saying that many of them "are among the most serious and violent offenders."

Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher.

Burglars in the United States serve an average of 16 months in prison, according to Mauer, compared with 5 months in Canada and 7 months in England.

Many specialists dismissed race as an important distinguishing factor in the American prison rate. It is true that blacks are much more likely to be imprisoned than other groups in the United States, but that is not a particularly distinctive phenomenon. Minorities in Canada, Britain and Australia are also disproportionately represented in those nation's prisons, and the ratios are similar to or larger than those in the United States.

Some scholars have found that English-speaking nations have higher prison rates.

"Although it is not at all clear what it is about Anglo-Saxon culture that makes predominantly English-speaking countries especially punitive, they are," Tonry wrote last year in "Crime, Punishment and Politics in Comparative Perspective."

"It could be related to economies that are more capitalistic and political cultures that are less social democratic than those of most European countries," Tonry wrote. "Or it could have something to do with the Protestant religions with strong Calvinist overtones that were long influential."

The American character - self-reliant, independent, judgmental - also plays a role.

"America is a comparatively tough place, which puts a strong emphasis on individual responsibility," Whitman of Yale wrote. "That attitude has shown up in the American criminal justice of the last 30 years."

French-speaking countries, by contrast, have "comparatively mild penal policies," Tonry wrote.

Of course, sentencing policies within the United States are not monolithic, and national comparisons can be misleading.

"Minnesota looks more like Sweden than like Texas," said Mauer of the Sentencing Project. (Sweden imprisons about 80 people per 100,000 of population; Minnesota, about 300; and Texas, almost 1,000. Maine has the lowest incarceration rate in the United States, at 273; and Louisiana the highest, at 1,138.)

Whatever the reasons, there is little dispute that America's exceptional incarceration rate has had an impact on crime.

"As one might expect, a good case can be made that fewer Americans are now being victimized" thanks to the tougher crime policies, Paul Cassell, an authority on sentencing and a former federal judge, wrote in The Stanford Law Review.

From 1981 to 1996, according to Justice Department statistics, the risk of punishment rose in the United States and fell in England. The crime rates predictably moved in the opposite directions, falling in the United States and rising in England.

"These figures," Cassell wrote, "should give one pause before too quickly concluding that European sentences are appropriate."

Other commentators were more definitive. "The simple truth is that imprisonment works," wrote Kent Scheidegger and Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in The Stanford Law and Policy Review. "Locking up criminals for longer periods reduces the level of crime. The benefits of doing so far offset the costs."

There is a counterexample, however, to the north. "Rises and falls in Canada's crime rate have closely paralleled America's for 40 years," Tonry wrote last year. "But its imprisonment rate has remained stable."

Several specialists here and abroad pointed to a surprising explanation for the high incarceration rate in the United States: democracy.

Most state court judges and prosecutors in the United States are elected and are therefore sensitive to a public that is, according to opinion polls, generally in favor of tough crime policies. In the rest of the world, criminal justice professionals tend to be civil servants who are insulated from popular demands for tough sentencing.

Whitman, who has studied Tocqueville's work on American penitentiaries, was asked what accounted for America's booming prison population.

"Unfortunately, a lot of the answer is democracy just what Tocqueville was talking about," he said. "We have a highly politicized criminal justice system."


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----- Original Message -----
From: Johnlawart@aol.com
To: GFGriner@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 10:56 PM
Subject: Re: I can't have "civil" rights.. from Johnny law

In a message dated 10/16/2006 12:56:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time, GFGriner writes:

John,

You might be right, but you need to be a little more patient with people who do not understand you point of view and what you have learned... Who can under stand that they do not have civil rights, but constitutional rights under a non 14th amendment citizen without a lot of instruction? Really, who can clearly say what a Sovereign is and how to become one?
F

answer: IT IS "CLEARLY" found in the Bible, read it for yourself. 

Or if that's to "hard" Click here: USA vs US



JOHNNY LAW sez:
You people keep going to your masters for info, then you bitch about your treatment . . . STOP LINING THEIR POCKETS!!! You're FEEDING THE FIRE THAT CONSUMES YOU AND YOUR KIDS!!! 

I G N O R E them PERIOD! Nobody said it would be easy. . . . 
YOU MAY BE JAILED! 
Will you have to scrape by? YES!
Will you have BAD days? OH YES!!! 
Will people say you're CRAZY? HELL YES!
Will you have to ride on the back of the bus???



Thats up to you!


Click here: USA vs US

KNOW THY MASTER!

Freedom ain't FREE. . .
FreeDUMB is!!!

 

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<<<Idaho Observer's front page (May 11, 2001)>>>

RESTORE THE CONSTITUTION
DON’T VOTE FOR LAWYERS

If it were
illegal, would you still vote a lawyer into public office?

The separation of powers doctrine is the cornerstone of our form of government in America. It was so important to lawyers that they be allowed to infiltrate all three branches that the original 13th Amendment was ratified December 10, 1812. The original 13th Amendment prevented persons who claim a title of nobility (such as esquire), from holding public office and such persons cease to be a citizen of the United States.

The original 13th Amendment was apparently replaced in 1865—not by an act of Congress, but by simply overwriting it with a different one regarding slavery.

Constitutions from the several states reflected the separation of powers doctrine but have since, like the federal constitution, been systematically marginalized. Since being allowed to influence policy in all three branches of government, lawyers have set up an adversarial society of chaos and misery wherein they can apply their craft and make tremendous profit as the expense of peace and prosperity.

A group in Florida is exposing the illegality of electing lawyers into non-judicial public office. Constitutional Guardians have accumulated evidence to suggest that behind every social ill, every bad law and every oppressive regulatory scheme is a coven of lawyers who are getting rich. Their research is reaching the state legislature, which has begun the process of disempowering the Florida State Bar Association.

"Taken from Idaho Observer, May 11, 2001 issue…page 11"
HELP SAVE AMERICA

***************************************

DON’T VOTE for LAWYERS

NATIONAL CONGRESS FOR LEGAL REFORM
P.O. Box 214 Huntington Sta. N.Y. 11746

www.constitutionalguradian.com * www.juri.com
 www.dadejustice.com * www.america-collins.com

By May, 2001, if you are not fully aware that your country, and therefore your own life and the lives of your friends, families, and children, are in serious trouble, then you never will. If you are fully aware that your country and countrymen are in serious trouble, then you may be ready for effective activism. One of the biggest threats to our way of life is the dissolution of the separation of powers among our three branches of government. The following five pages of material are designed to provide you with the tools, which will help remove lawyers, members of the judiciary, from the executive and legislative branches of government. With thanks to Robert Bertand and Mike Calhoun of Miami Lakes, Florida, who have, at tremendous personal sacrifice, designed the template of activism that can lead to the removal of lawyers from public office.

Why the original 13th Amendment is missing

According to the work of David Dodge and Tom Dunn, Constitutions for the United States of America that were published after 1811 and prior to 1864 contain a 13th Amendment that reads: "If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility to honor, or shall, without the consent of Congress accept and retain any present pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them."

The 13th Amendment that has been in place since December 18th, 1865, is the amendment that abolished slavery—"…except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

Dodge and Dunn were later joined by Brian March and, after nearly a decade of research, were able to prove conclusively that Congress did, indeed, ratify the "Titles of Nobility Amendment." It was ratified December 10,1812. Nevada, admitted to the Union October 31, 1864 as the 36th state while Lincoln was president, was the first state admitted under the new 13th Amendment.

Nearly every attorney is a member of a Bar association. The Bar has its roots in the British Inner Temples 
Members of the bar who are justice of the peace and other inferior judicial officers such as lawyers are properly addressed as "esquires." Black’s Law Dictionary, 4th Edition, defines esquire:
"In English law, a title of dignity next above gentlemen and below knight. Also a title of office given to sheriffs, sergeants, and barristers at law, justices of the peace, and others."

The original 13th Amendment was ratified to prevent persons with allegiances to foreign nations from holding public office. The 13th Amendment, the concept of which is found in the Federalist Papers (Federalist 47, January 30, 1788) was also ratified to support constitutional provisions that intended to separate the powers of government. James Madison, the author of the Constitution, wanted to design a form of government that had sufficient power to govern, but insufficient power to oppress. He felt that to accomplish this the Constitution must be specifically written to prevent any "single hands" group from accumulating all powers of government. " No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that… the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether on one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definitions of tyranny," wrote Madison.

It appears from the record that the leaders of this nation in its infancy were divided into two camps. One camp supported the Republican form of the government that intended to preserve the national sovereignty and the sovereignty of citizens. The other camp intended to betray the sovereignty of the nation and the individual, go-given sovereignty of her people to the authority of the international bankers.

The disappearance of the original 13th Amendment has allowed officers of the judiciary, lawyers, to hold public office—a direct affront to the intentions of the Framers.

By electing lawyers into the legislature and executive offices in America, we have effectively dissolved the separation of powers. The Framers warned us of the dangers of lawyers being allowed to hold offices in legislative and executive branches of government. The Framers built provisions into our Republican form of government designed to prevent lawyers from holding offices in any branch except the judicial branch. Lawyers now compromise nearly half of the legislative and executive offices in America. The result has been the creation of a special society of Americans, lawyers and judges, who now make the laws, interpret the laws and enforce the laws.

Visit the Idaho Observer's Website @
www.proliberty.com/observer
Phone:(208) 255-2307 
Fax:    (208) 255-2607
E-Mail:
observer@coldreams.com

The preceding was printed from the:  
Idaho Observer Newspaper  
P.O. Box 457 
Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869

Subscription rates: $25.00 for 12 monthly issues* or just $45.00 for 24 monthly issues* Please add 50% to non U.S. subscriptions to cover cost of mailing. 

Permission was obtained prior to posting this article online.

 

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This Is NOT An American Flag

Admiralty Flag

Every time you walk into a courtroom, anywhere in the USA, you'll find this banner displayed in the front of the room, next to the judge. (It's also displayed in federally funded schools and in government buildings.)

By displaying this banner, they are putting you "On Notice" that you are NOT in a court of "Common Law," or of "Constitutional Law," but are in a court of "Merchant Law!"

This is an "Admiralty" Flag of British Maritime Law come ashore!
("Old Glory," the Flag of the American Republic, does NOT have a gold fringe!)

This is Old Glory!Old Glory

In 1938 the united States supreme Court ruled that the "Common Law" was now "statutorized," and no longer existed as a separate system of law (that's why they'll not accept any legal precedent that predates 1938.) As a result, when you appear in a "Merchant Law Court" the U.S. Constitution has no effect, and you have NO Rights! You are now under the jurisdiction of the Uniform Commercial Code!

Because they don't want you to learn the proper jurisdiction, today's courts give lip service to accepting the Fifth Amendment defense -- but try to introduce the Constitution into the court proceedings! You'll be threatened by the judge!

What you are seeing, right in front of your eyes, is an unprecedented GRAB for power by the "federal" government! The "federal" government has NO jurisdiction within the borders of these separate and sovereign united States, correct spelling (united is NOT capitalized). However, they have TRICKED you into accepting that they DO have jurisdiction!

 

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