Assange update

http://www.executedtoday.com/2014/09/06/1771-matthias-klostermayr-the-bavarian-hiasl/

Following our London visit and walkpast of the Ecuadorian Embassy last month, where perhaps the most famous victim of the abuse-inviting European Arrest Warrant is besieged by the British Government, and where the (sole) Met police guard slipped furtively round the corner when we spotted him, it has been decided:

(a) to remove the guard, after spending 10+ millions of pounds allegedly securing this fugitive from dodgy justice - and I'd really like to see the accounts for that thoroughly audited;

(b) to deny Assange his right to medical assessment - with potentially lethal consequences.

How does this look to fair-minded people? Perhaps HMG is unselfconscious - or is it simply thundering arrogance?

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.

 

- Robert Burns (1786)

 

"History has taught me, that RULERS are much the same in all ages & under all forms of government: they are as bad as they dare to be."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in a letter to his brother George (c. 10 March 1798)

It's odd, but in various ways - e.g. reflections on national constitutions and the abuse of State power -both sides of the Atlantic seem to be revisiting the late eighteenth century.


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EU: the sand line

A year ago, Iain Dale passed on a claim that the EU could block Cameron's promised 2017 referendum under the new "qualified majority voting" (QMV) rules, and Ian Parker-Joseph has made reference to the same claim on FB today.

What the Tulkinghorns of law and constitution fail to understand is that nations are governed not solely by the will of the majority (or their representatives), but also by the acquiescence of the minority. However craftily written, pieces of paper don't bind by themselves. If the schemers in their chambers forget this, they could cause dangerous cracks in the body politic.

Here's Jefferson in 1774:

When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state, and calls for an exercise of the power of dissolution...

A free people [claim] their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

And here, in 1782:

"Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent." -- Notes on Virginia Q.VIII, 1782. ME 2:120

Must the lessons of history be re-learned?


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Is our EU membership ultra vires?

Dr Richard AE North is a distinguished blogger and writer, but I do not entirely share his distaste for UKIP, of which he was once (like Professor Alan Sked) a key mover and shaker.

It seems that like many others, Dr North finds constitutional objections to EU membership as irritating as a gadfly. Here's a recent exchange:

[from the main body of his post] To this sad, dysfunctional crew, the EU treaties are "illegal" and those who signed it are "traitors". Any idea of negotiation or agreement is an anathema. They would sooner see the British economy crash and burn than accept a deal with Brussels.

[Me] Bit tendentious. I do indeed argue that UK entry into the EU in 1973 was ultra vires. Why that should make me sad and dysfunctional I'm not quite sure...

[Dr North] This is exactly what I mean .... apart from the fact that we didn't enter the EU in 1973 (or the EEC for that matter), the entry was in accord with our constitutional arrangements. Why does it matter so much that you need to assert that it is "ultra vires"? It isn't...

[Me] But we did enter the EU and didn't know it. We were told it was simply a trading arrangement and didn't know about the commitment to "ever-closer union". But Macmillan, Heath and others did know, because they got legal advice that told them of the constitutional implications. And we do have a constitution, one that very specifically forbids ceding any sovereign power to anyone outside the country. So yes, it was and is ultra vires. The referendum didn't validate the change because again the prospectus was false. If this seems like a boring legal point then let us have done with law - which is a trend I see here and elsewhere.

Constitutional argument is currently raging - among those who read, rather than play computer games - in the USA also ("Washington's Blog" is a good place to start). For example, under the US Constitution - at least as it used to be - Congress declares war, not the President.

It is a bit odd that a passionate democrat like Dr North, who espouses the direct-democracy "Harrogate Agenda", should dislike those who point out that here as in the US, constitutions - the foundations of legislation and power, the source of their legitimacy - have been snipped through like the string on a child's balloon.

For all its many faults - and no human institution is free of fault, as doubtless Dr North will discover if ever the Harrogate Agenda should come to be implemented - UKIP is gaining support because people are becoming aware how radically disenfranchised we have become, and how money and power are clearing away the last obstacles to their unrestricted global rule.


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Constitutional questions

"The Arrival of William III" by Sir James Thornhill. Original uploader was

Raymond Palmer at en.wikipedia - Transferred from en.wikipedia;

transferred to Commons by User:Magnus Manske using CommonsHelper.

(Original text : South Wall of the Painted Hall, Old Royal Naval College,

Greenwich [1]). Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Email today from myself to Dr Andrew Blick, of the Constitution Society:

"Dear Dr Blick

Would you or anyone else from the Constitution Society be prepared to discuss the proposition that Britain's 1973 entry into the EEC was unconstitutional?

In particular, how do the 1689 Bill of Rights and the Monarch's Oath of Office bear on the issues?

(We leave aside for the moment the complications regarding the subsequent referendum of 1975, itself made questionable by the withholding from the public of intragovernmental legal and constitutional advice, and partisan misrepresentations to the public by the then Government, news media and other parties.)

Was our entry into the EEC in 1973 not ultra vires?

The debate must surely be more urgent as we face the consolidation of power in the EU by the introduction of majority voting in November.

Is there anybody who can provide authoritative comment?

P.S. Further, is it not the case that Magna Carta's significance since 1689 is purely symbolic, without any legal force whatever? King John may have agreed to bind "our heirs in perpetuity" (Clause 1 re the English Church), but did not the Revolution put the monarchy on an entirely new basis? MC may be our Pole Star, but not our pilot."

Dr Blick is on holiday, but I hope for a reply.


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Is it officially permissible to be a Christian? Or indeed, anything?

Here in the Daily Mail is a sample of the hoo-ha about nurse Caroline Petrie, who was suspended for offering to pray for an elderly patient. (She also used to leave a mildly evangelical Christian pamphlet.) The patient says, "I have Christian beliefs myself, but it could perhaps be upsetting for some other people if they have different beliefs or thought that she meant they looked in such a bad way that they needed praying for."

Both parties seem reasonable and decent. What's worrying is what happens when officialdom gets involved, as the rest of the story shows.

But I'd love to see a Philadelphia lawyer let loose on the "Nursing and Midwifery Council code" (full text here) which Mrs Petrie is deemed to have breached. By implication, this code regulates not merely conduct, but opinions and even religious faith.

The code commands nurses to "Be open and honest, act with integrity" and straightaway gives a very contentious clarification of the term "integrity": "You must demonstrate a personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity." The managers at the health organisation for which Mrs Petrie works clearly understand "equality and diversity" to cover religions. The logic of this is that Jews, Muslims and Christians (among others) cannot work as nurses - for note the word "personal" in that order. It may be that atheists would also be precluded.

All this results from two things: the State getting too big for its boots; and in attempting to govern every aspect of our lives has delegated insanely wide-ranging powers to quangos, who make and apply rules with a whim of iron. The professions and semi-professions - doctors, teachers, nurses and so on* - all have their own little councils to terrorise them. Such prodnosing easily magnifies a "storm in a teacup" into an issue that could affect your job, wealth, family life and physical liberty.

We need a Constitution to limit the powers of would-be tyrants, even if they are now soft-handed, well-dressed ones. Resist the Red Armani Choir.
_______________________
* ... even foster parents.

"Give me Liberty or give me debt"

Bernard von Nothaus, issuer of the "Liberty Dollar" is sounding feisty. Such people are most inconvenient for the smooth running of public affairs; it's awkward cusses like him who were the grassroots of the American Revolution (though of course, the Founding Fathers faced a far more grisly legal retribution if they failed).

There is a serious point: is America prepared to refresh its commitment to the principles of the Constitution, which Ron Paul champions; or is it "the old order changeth, yielding place to new"? In which case, when was that decided, and by whom, and with what right?

It's a burning issue for us in the UK, too: here, a thousand years of organic (and often bloody) constitutional development is to be hurriedly reshaped by lawyers and bureaucrats working for the Executive, in the name of vaguely-phrased hurray-words ("justice, rights and democracy" - the last is particularly ironic, since I don't remember voting for this ramshackle assault). Has it become the people's representatives v. the people? Perhaps our "new" Labour government has ignore its Methodist roots and relaxed the laws on drinking, gambling and sexual activity so that we will be distracted from taking an interest in more serious matters.

On a lighter note, it's fun to see that, legal currency or not, such Liberty Dollars as are still out of FBI custody are currently a good investment. Maybe better than the Fed's IOUs, if you believe the bullion-hoarders.

Jacob Shallus might have thought so. The $30 he earned for engrossing the Constitution was the equivalent of 5 weeks' worth of a Philadelphia printer's wages in 1786. What does $30 get you today?