AFP Right On Line #3

Today is the general session for RightOnLine so I'll have a series of blog posts on the various speakers. Again, these are my rough notes taken during their speeches and is not verbatim. As my fellow bloggers here say, thank goodness I can type fast.

VP of the parent company of the Venetian Hotel and Resort, where we are staying (I did not get his name):

* Venetian is the largest building in the world. He says that after Pres. Obama made his negative comments about Las Vegas, they had over 26,000 room cancellations resulting in millions of lost revenue from both the rooms and food & beverage sales.

Judge Andrew Napolitano:

* Starts with several humorous stories from his time on the bench
* Talking about Thomas Moore in his trial, who was beheaded for refusing to admit the king is the head of the church on earth. He argued for a natural law and the fundamental belief that we are free individuals.
* This led to the statement that 'all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator,' not their government.
* He had a debate with a person the other day who said that these statements were just Jefferson's 'musings.'
* When the government fails to protect human freedom it is the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.
* These are not Jefferson's musings, these are written by the natural law in every person's heart.
* British soldiers used to be able to write their own search warrants to look for the king's 'stamps' on all your private papers...this was actually rescinded prior to our Revolution but it was too late and we won the Revolution and wrote the Constitution to ensure we'd never again be subject to the tyranny we'd just rejected.
* Our freedom comes from our humanity - it is as natural to use as our physical bodies are. Our tendency to be free are hard-wired into us by our Creator.
* This is the natural law argument that won the argument during the writing of our Constitution.
* The Bill of Rights - our right to defend those freedoms, even from the government when it is taken over by tyrants, even the right to be left alone are guaranteed to us in this document.
* Everyone knows 'Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech' so how is it that shortly thereafter we had a law making it a crime to criticize the government (alien & sedition act)? Then one congressman referred to Pres. Adams as 'his rotundancy' and was then convicted and sent to prison under the act. But he ran for re-election from prison and won.
* So how could the same people who wrote the Constitution with the free speech provision then violate it so? The 'lust to dominate' - the urge people in government have to tell others how to live their lives.
* If a candidate or elected official wants to tell you how to live your life, VOTE THEM OUT OF OFFICE.
* Lincoln locked up publishers from the North during the civil war - they were locked up in a military prison but the Supreme Court set them free.
* Espionage Act makes it a crime to talk someone out of being drafted, work in a munitions, etc. These other bad acts have expired, but this one is still in effect.
* Tells story of a man who was tried and convicted under this act, but the problem was that his written urgings were in Yiddish. He died in prison.
* The other thing to remember is that the states created the federal government and not the other way away. I would have added also: and the power the states gave to the federal government, they can take back from the federal government (much applause)
* If someone came to your door with a gun and said, "give me your money so I can give it away to others in your name.' So you call the police only to find he is the police, a federal officer. Taxation is theft.
* Taxation assumes that the government has a higher right to your money than you do. The Constitution ensures that what you earn, work for, etc... is yours - not the government's.
* Congressman Clyburn - I asked him where in the Constitution is the authorization for Health Care? He said most of what we do here is not authorized in the Constitution. "Where is the prohibition for health care?" This is a problem with the thinking because the federal government is granted only limited duties with all others reserved to the states or to the people.
* Government took over the Mustang Ranch and couldn't provide hookers and booze to truckers and they want to provide health care????
* Today we gather to celebrate our freedoms. Five years from now, will there be anything left to celebrate? Only a few generations have been given the honorable role of defending freedom - this is your role today.