Null & Void: Constitution No Longer "Suicide Pact"

Gov. Perry of Texas is just a politician who's about to lose an approaching primary, trying to get Texas's Goofy Ass Party base to vote for him w/o actually calling for a return to chattel slavery. Good luck, Rick. The Georgia State Senate, however, stands up & is counted, 43-1, calling for the dissolution of these United Snakes, if that damn Congreƒs doesn't stop passing laws & stuff.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution web log maintainer gives the highlights.

It stated that under the Constitution, the only crimes the federal government could prosecute were treason, piracy and slavery. “Therefore, all acts of Congress which assume to create, define or punish [other] crimes … are altogether void, and of no force,” the Georgia Senate declared. [...] The resolution goes on to endorse the theory that states have the right to abridge constitutional freedoms of religion, press and speech. According to the resolution, it is up to the states to decide “how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged.” The resolution even endorses “nullification,” the legal concept that states have the power to “nullify” or ignore federal laws that they believe exceed the powers granted under the Constitution. That concept has a particularly nasty legacy. It helped precipitate the Civil War, and in the 1950s and early ’60s it was cited by Southern states claiming the right to ignore Supreme Court rulings ordering the end of segregation. Finally, the resolution states that if Congress, the president or federal courts take any action that exceeds their constitutional powers, the Constitution is rendered null and void and the United States of America is officially disbanded. As an example, the resolution specifically states that if the federal government enacts “prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition,” the country is disbanded.

In other words, if Congress votes to restore the ban on sale of assault rifles, the United States is deemed to no longer exist. It is explained that this (totally un-binding, of course) resolution was

snuck [sic] unnoticed onto the Senate resolution calendar on the 39th day of the 40-day legislative session, when senators were trying to handle dozens of bills and scores of amendments. Most did not have an opportunity to read the six-page resolution, which in its description claimed to merely affirm “states’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.”

Remember the furor when some of our representatives in Congreƒs may not have read the entire bail-out & emergency financial whatever bill? What about this, which was voted on w/o reading either? Where, oh where, is the outrage? There probably won't be much from certain quarters. As usual, this is not the result of original thought from a legislator.

The resolution they sponsored is part of a radical right-wing national movement —- a similar resolution was introduced in the Georgia House but not voted on. It has been introduced in legislatures all over the nation, and has passed in both chambers in Oklahoma and one in South Dakota. And while the Georgia resolution is legally meaningless and was passed without debate or even knowledge of most senators, it has had an impact. It has been hailed by, among others, those fighting the conspiracy to create a single North American country, by the Confederate States Militia, by the John Birch Society, and the League of the South, which still pines for the cause of an “independent South” and believes that “Southern society is radically different from the society impressed upon it by an alien occupier.”

While the resolution seems to be the usual boilerplate from this ilk of cretin (Second Amendment yes, all others suck!!) we have to wonder if it started making the rounds of the statehouses before or after President Obama's election. 

Either way, we welcome the John Birch Society to the national discourse. The Birchers really deserve to be at the forefront of conservatism, as their paranoid ideology of communist infiltration ("See!? See?! 60  years of commies under the bed and what do you get in the White House? Huh?") has been the template for the right's current attempts to deny the results of the election. Their time has come.