by Philip Martin, BOR

Last week, I argued that Debra Medina was set-up by Glenn Beck and Rick Perry (“Gut Reaction: Team Rick Perry Used Glenn Beck to Attack Debra Medina”). As you’ll recall, Medina was skyrocketing in the polls — it was certain she would force a runoff, and becoming increasingly possible that she would be in that runoff herself. For Medina, a quick appearance on Glenn Beck’s radio show probably seemed like a terrific idea — Beck’s constant promotion of extreme right-wing views appealed to the type of people who were supporting Debra Medina.

But Medina was not talking to Glenn Beck the activist — because there is no such thing. Especially not when Beck’s boss is such a major supporter of Rick Perry. According to the Texas Ethics Commission, Clear Channel CEO and Chairman Lowry Mays has donated almost $300,000 to Rick Perry.

Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and countless other right-wing radio station personalities are owned by Clear Channel. Beck is paid $10 million by a Clear Channel subsidiary for his radio show (Source: Forbes). Is it any surprise, then, that he ambushed Medina the way he did — and subsequently told all of his radio listeners to support Perry? After he finished his interview with Medina, Beck went on to pronounce his love for Rick Perry (Source: Radio Interview Transcript):

GLENN: I think I can write her off the list. Let me take another look at Kay Bailey Hutchison if I have to. Rick, I think you and I could French kiss right now.

PAT: Let me tell you something. He’s a damn handsome man.

GLENN: He’s a damn handsome man.

PAT: Looks good in a pair of jeans.

GLENN: Wow.

PAT: He’s a handsome man.

GLENN: Wow. The fastest way back to 4%.

The set-up by Beck was quickly echoed throughout the mainstream media. The Dallas Morning News went on to immediately call it a “game-ending-gaffe.” Few in the media, however, noted Perry’s financial ties to Clear Channel and Glenn Beck — or took any moments to repeat the absolutely bizarre conspiracy theories Beck puts out on his own. After all, this is Glenn Beck:

It sadly is not surprising that violence can result when Beck proclaims that our government is marching towards fascism, or when he salivates at the thought of the rising up of a militias, or when he warns that “we are a county heading towards socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination”. Distrust and hatred of government are not unforeseeable results when Beck tells his audience that “everything” reported on by the traditional media “is a lie”, or when he claims that the AmericCorps bill “indoctrinates your child into community service through the federal government”. When Beck muses aloud about the various ways he could kill Michael Moore, or lashes out at the “the war against the American way”, and when he claims that the president’s budget is enslaving and “out and out evil”(more evil than extraordinary rendition, according to Beck), he cannot feign surprise if and when the seeds of hatred and panic he sows bear fruit.

When he flatly and unequivocally states that the “destruction of the West is happening”, or when he shows photos of the president transitioning to photos of Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin and asks “is this where we’re headed?”, he is not merely playing the role, as he puts it, of the “rodeo clown.”

Debra Medina’s gaffe — set-up by a suspicious line of questioning from an employee of one of Rick Perry’s top contributors — could end up being the turning point from the election going to a runoff to Perry winning the primary outright.

by Paul Joseph Watson

A prominent insider has told Infowars that Texas Governor Rick Perry and other establishment neo-cons have decided to deliberately target grass roots constitutionalists with dirty tricks campaigns in an effort to derail and hijack the growing liberty movement whose influence is threatening to blow the Texas gubernatorial race wide open.

Our office was contacted by a national personality, a household name, who told us that they were in a green room at a national public event a few weeks ago with Rick Perry. The individual was shocked when Perry said directly that there were three people who ‘got under his skin’ and who ‘had to be dealt with’ immediately.

One – Debra Medina, two – Alex Jones, and three – Ron Paul.

Perry told the individual that these three people had to be targeted and stopped in order for the Republican establishment to shut down any real voices of opposition that were threatening to have an influence on the Tea Party movement, which has been blatantly hijacked by the neo-cons in recent months.

Perry made it clear that these individuals and their supporters were the number one target of the neo-con hierarchy because the grass roots was threatening to regain control of the Tea Party movement that was first created by Ron Paul supporters back in 2007, but has since been hijacked by the Republicans.

The insider expressed their shock that Perry would be so open with his comments, suspecting that Perry must have considered the individual to be a fellow neo-con. The insider’s deep concern about what was said prompted them to contact our office.

Perry made the comments just a couple of weeks before gubernatorial challenger Debra Medina, the only true constitutionalist running for Governorship in Texas, was set-up by Fox News’ Glenn Beck, after the duplicitous talk show host smeared Medina and generated a fake controversy merely for saying that people should be free to question the official 9/11 story, a view shared by the vast majority of Americans.

Perry, who was subsequently celebrated by Beck as the only remaining credible candidate after the smear attack on Medina, must have been in on the ploy. Within an hour of her appearance on the Glenn Beck radio show, Texas residents told the Austin-American Statesmen that they had received robo-calls on behalf of the Perry campaign demonizing Medina as an unstable “9/11 truther,” echoing Beck’s manufactured talking point aired just an hour earlier.

There can no longer be any doubt that the RNC establishment is running a targeted smear campaign against real grass roots conservatives and libertarians because they are terrified that such individuals will be able to steer the Tea Party movement in a genuine national revolt against big government, thereby massively diminishing the power of establishment Republicans.

This dirty tricks campaign is most likely being steered by Karl Rove, master Republican political strategist and former Rick Perry campaign manager. Rove cut his teeth in Texas, using his “uncanny ability to manipulate federal prosecutors into going after the officeholder his client was trying to unseat,” reports Harper’s Magazine writer Scott Horton.

Horton reveals how Rove, in his capacity as Perry’s campaign manager for the powerful Texas office of Commissioner of Agriculture, eliminated Perry’s political opposition by using his influence to launch aggressive criminal investigations into their past and then hyping allegations of misconduct in the media.

Rove is a kingpin of smear and dirty tricks campaigns, and his fingerprints are all over this latest assault.

We now have confirmation of everything we have been witnessing from the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and even establishment leftists like Chris Matthews, who have all been echoing the same talking points about grass roots constitutionalists and “9/11 truthers” being terrorists and a threat to the President – this is all part of an orchestrated campaign to target real patriot leaders for character assassination and it is being directed from the highest levels of the Republican power structure.

While Medina and Ron Paul are being attacked from above by the establishment, since this would be too obvious – Alex Jones is constantly being attacked from below by phony patriot groups in a ploy to make the smears look more organic and genuine in their nature.

Ron Paul is setting the example of how the liberty movement can have an impact at the national level, while Medina is showing people that it’s possible to take back control at state level. Alex Jones is setting the example of how Constitutionalists can take back control of the fourth estate, the media.

The burgeoning success of this combination has the establishment running scared, which is why they have resolved to sick attack dog media whores like Glenn Beck on any individual who poses a threat to the controlled left-right paradigm that Beck upholds while marginalizing any real voices of opposition to big government. As we have exhaustively documented, Beck poses as a grass roots libertarian and yet he is a virulent neo-con, constantly hyping an attack on Iran, supporting the bailout and calling for more new taxes.

Beck is following the precise methods laid out by Obama White House regulation czar Cass Sunstein in his 2008 white paper. “Conspiracy theorists,” ie real Constitutionalists and grass roots activists, have been targeted as the number one threat to the power structure and Beck’s job is to neutralize their influence by using a mixture of infiltration, in claiming he is a libertarian yet leading his followers astray on key issues, as well as demonization, by claiming people who question 9/11 are an extremist fringe on both left and right, when in fact they make up no less than 84 per cent of the population.

The revelation that the Republican dirty tricks machine is targeting Constitutionalists as the real threat to their power structure, and the fact that they are using the fake neo-con, the Benedict Arnold of our times, Glenn Beck, as their primary mouthpiece for this assault, speaks volumes about the level of influence the real liberty movement is now having on the body politic in America.

Internally, while the likes of Perry and Beck dismiss the real grass roots as “fringe extremists,” with Beck claiming earlier this week on his show that they make up no more than 10 per cent of the country, their constant attacks illustrate just how worried the neo-cons are about the growing liberty movement, which comprises far more than 10 per cent of politically active Americans.

The phrase “As goes Texas, so goes the U.S.” has never been more appropriate. If Medina were to win the Governorship, Texas would become the bellwether trend setting state and provide massive impetus for the liberty movement to run candidates and win in other states across America. A Medina victory would send a big message to the country and grease the skids for true Constitutionalists to take over state houses, governorships and legislatures nationwide.

A Medina victory would also legitimize the Tea Parties as a true organic movement of the people, and not as an astroturf offshoot of the Republican party, as the neo-con hijacking of the movement has allowed it to be characterized by the establishment media.

A victory for the liberty movement in Texas would also completely derail funding for the North American Union, the Nafta Superhighway, cap and trade measures being enforced at state level, and a whole host of other unconstitutional initiatives that are being pushed by globalist and Bilderberg attendee Rick Perry.

Watch the video below in which Alex Jones explains how Rick Perry, Glenn Beck and the neo-con establishment have resolved to target the true liberty movement as the number one threat to their power structure, as well as how Sarah Palin’s comments on 9/11 expose how the Debra Medina “9/11 truther” controversy was a manufactured hoax.

by Brian Stanley, DumpDC

In the 1868 case of Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700, a case dealing with the title to some U.S. bonds, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas’, and hence the South’s, attempted secession in 1861 was unconstitutional. But the opinion also contained some wording that might give secessionists a way around White.

It’s unfortunate that the Court used White as the vehicle to address the constitutionality of secession. The Court reached the constitutionality issue only because of a jurisdictional question; and it was virtually impossible for the Court not to hold secession unconstitutional a mere three years after the end of the War Between the States. A finding of constitutionality would have rendered unnecessary all the death and misery of that war. Of course, it was unnecessary. But the point is that the Court was under tremendous pressure to uphold the result of the war as if constitutional issues are settled on the battlefield. (For an excellent overview of why secession was constitutional, Lincoln’s arguments against it, and various other aspects of the secession issue, see “Was the Union Army’s Invasion of the Confederate States a Lawful Act?” by James Ostrowski.)

No, this was certainly not the optimum test, or a fair test, for a decision on such a vital constitutional matter. Nevertheless, the case, wrongly decided as it probably was, is out there and serves as a significant hurdle for secessionists if we hope to secede lawfully. If we look at secession as a matter of political will and are not concerned with secession’s constitutionality, White is not particularly important. But let’s assume for now that the goal is lawful, constitutional secession.

So what is the potentially helpful language the Court used? After noting that it was “needless to discuss at length whether the right of a State to withdraw from the Union for any cause, regarded by herself as sufficient, is consistent with the Constitution of the United States[,]” the Court then determined that the Union was intended to be perpetual and then stated that after Texas entered into “an indissoluble relation” with the Union: “There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution or through the consent of the States.” (Emphasis added.)

Consent of the states. What does that mean? We know it doesn’t mean a constitutional amendment. That is a term of art, and there is no logical explanation as to why learned justices would use the phrase “consent of the states” if they meant constitutional amendment. Does this phrase tell secessionists that there is another way to secede other than constitutional amendment? Does it mean the consent of a majority of states?

Opponents of secession will no doubt say that the phrase is mere dicta and has no controlling effect. Dicta are, basically, a comment that isn’t essential to the case’s outcome. (The full term is obiter dicta: dead words. Dictum is singular.) Dicta aren’t part of the holding. But lawyers and judges argue all the time about whether a phrase is dicta or holding. Richard Posner, judge and legal scholar, once noted that the distinction between the two concepts “is fuzzy not only at the level of application but also at the conceptual level.” Posner, “The Federal Courts: Crisis and Reform” (1985). Some have said calling something dicta merely means: I don’t want to follow this decision. So dismissing the phrase as dicta, while a predictable tactic, isn’t necessarily fatal to the use of the phrase by secessionists.

Complicating matters more there’s a concept called judicial dicta. These are dicta that deal with an issue that was briefed and argued and was directly involved in the decision but isn’t essential to the decision in the case. Judicial dicta, also difficult to define, are given more weight than dicta.

The “consent of the states” phrase is, at worst, judicial dicta, as the issue of constitutionality was briefed and argued. The Court’s comment must be given some weight. It has some meaning. And it helps secessionists. Constitutional amendment requires 38 states. And getting the Court to overturn White is highly unlikely. So this consent concept provides a third, possibly somewhat easier, option than either amendment or overturning of the case.

Michael C. Dorf, a law professor at Columbia and a constitutional scholar, is one of the few commentators who has addressed this language in White. In an article about secession, Dorf, after saying that White held secession unconstitutional, looked to the “consent of the states” language and said, essentially, that we don’t know what it means but it may provide an argument for states that want to secede. The article, interestingly, was addressed to a question about whether blue states could secede after the 2004 election. The title of the article, in fact, was “Does the Constitution Permit the Blue States to Secede? With Permission, Perhaps; Unilaterally, No” FindLaw (Wednesday Nov. 24, 2004).

If the White language does allow secession on the approval of the states (however that approval is given), how likely is it that secessionists could get 26 states? Well, the original 11 Confederate states would be a good start. Vermont has one of the most active secessionists movements in the U.S., so it might join in. North and South Dakota, Montana and Idaho are possibilities. Oklahoma is a likely candidate. Missouri and Kentucky are possibilities. That’s a total of 19. Approval by these states won’t happen immediately, but if the federal government continues to trample on the rights of the people who thinks it won’t? And if the secessionist movement can effectively educate the public, especially in states that might agree to secede, maybe getting 26 states isn’t out of the question in the foreseeable future. And it’s always possible that a few blue states will approve of secession just to get rid of us.

With an epidemic of drug/alien-related murder, robbery and torture going on in Texas cities, what does state law enforcement there deem a worthy allocation of taxpayer resources? The Mormons. Those potentially vicious, unpredictable and subversive threats to public safety… -D.W.

by Darrel Mulloy, The Cypress Times

“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.” -Tenth amendment in the Bill of Rights

Now, here’s the problem. I am part of “the people” and as a part of the people I should be able to tell the federal government that I am not going to pay attention to those mandates that they pass on to us that are not their authority under the Constitution. The only problem with that, well make it a couple of problems, is that if the federal government passes Cap and Trade, for example, I will have to pay the same increases as someone who agrees with it, whether I want to or not. I won’t be able to heat or air condition my home, fuel my car or pickup, or pay for the everyday things we all need, without paying as well for those increases that will be brought on by Cap and Trade.

Suppose I don’t want the proposed mandatory health care that Obama and his gang of thugs are trying to force on us? I am on Social Security, being over seventy, but quite healthy and don’t feel the need for insurance. My Social Security check, for as long as the system lasts, will have the necessary amount deducted in order to pay my share of a program that I don’t want anything to do with. When Social Security is finally insolvent enough that I, and those others now on the plan, no longer can contribute, we will probably be forced into “end of life counseling”. Soylent Green anyone?

I want to exercise my right under the tenth amendment, but as an individual I can’t. You and I are part of the people that are mentioned in that amendment, but we have no choice but to go along with the unconstitutional mandates that Washington DC is forcing on us. The state governments can, and some have, tell Washington DC that they will no longer accept any legislation that is passed by them that is not authorized by the Constitution; which is just about every bit of legislation they have passed in my lifetime.

We can either tell our state officials that we want them to uphold the tenth amendment, or if they refuse, to call for the people to throw out the existing government and form a new one through a secession process. I prefer secession, but would be happy with enforcement of the tenth amendment.

The only problem I have with the tenth amendment enforcement, well, again make that more than one problem, is that in time, Washington would find some way to circumvent it, and even if we did enforce it and the majority of the other states didn’t, we would still feel the effects of something like Cap and Trade. It would be almost impossible not to have to use some of the services and products from other states that would be affected by Cap and Trade or forced medical insurance.

Secession would at least allow us to keep the premise of the tenth amendment from being rescinded, although we would still have the problem of dealing to some degree with the other states. I don’t think it is the first choice of the majority of Texas voters, but I could be wrong. I know I would be wrong if and when we see the passage of Cap and Trade and Obamacare. By then, it may be too late.

Darrel is currently a resident of Oregon in the process of moving back to Texas. He is married to his wife of forty-two years, Marilyn. They have raised seven children have 23 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren.