Following Gold Star father Khizr Khan’s powerful speech at the Democratic convention last week, sales of pocket Constitutions have skyrocketed. But the edition topping Amazon’s charts – right up there with the new Harry Potter book — comes with annotations and right-wing commentary from Glenn Beck’s favorite conspiracy theorist.
“Let me ask you: have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy,” Khan said last week in Philadelphia, pulling his edition out of his pocket. “In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law’.”
But the version that Amazon is touting as a best-seller is not the one Khan held up. And readers looking for those words in the edition there will be misled. It’s published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, a fringe Mormon group focused on teaching a fundamentalist interpretation of the founding documents.
The Washington Post, Forbes, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, and PBS NewsHour have all noted the extraordinary popularity the NCCS version is enjoying on Amazon — but all failed to note the edition’s unusual features.
The Post, which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, simply described it as having been “printed by the nonpartisan National Center for Constitutional Studies”
Some Amazon shoppers expressed their outrage. One reviewer wrote, “please do not get this edition.” Another warned: “tread with caution.” Yet another wrote: “Just give me the document our wise forefathers wrote, not a bunch of excess quotes and jargon to convince me they were right.”
The book’s notes and annotations are by W. Cleon Skousen, a rabidly anti-Communist ideologue who took to rewriting history to support his ultra-right, Bible-based theories.
Skousen’s edition interprets the Constitution as evidence that the United States is subject to a Christian God’s ruling. It emphasizes that the federal government should not interfere in people’s lives.
The book was lauded by Ammon Bundy, who led the armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge this winter: “That’s where I get most of my information from. What we’re trying to do is teach the true principles of the proper form of government,” he told The Los Angeles Times.
Skousen was a former FBI agent and briefly the police chief of Salt Lake City — until the mayor fired him, saying he was “a master of half truths” and ran the police department “like a gestapo.” Following his death in 2006, he became a darling of the Tea Party.
Florida state officials distributed as many as 80,000 copies of the NCCS pocket Constitution in 2013 until the Tampa Bay Times noted its religious messages.
“There’s conservative, there’s right-wing and there’s off the charts,” Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University history professor, told the newspaper. “Cleon Skousen was off the charts.” Wilentz described Skousen and his allies as “paranoid theocrats.”
There are more than 15,000,000 copies of this constitution in circulation, according to the NCCS.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union is offering nonannotated copies of the Constitution for free.
In honor of Khizr Khan, get your FREE POCKET CONSTITUTION: https://t.co/wZdkZIahpi pic.twitter.com/875YWCeNZZ
— ACLU National (@ACLU) July 29, 2016
Both editions are now back-ordered.
Amazon could not immediately be reached for comment.
Top photo: Jon Ritzheimer, part of an armed anti-government militia that occupied an Oregon federal wildlife reserve this winter, shows a family picture on his phone and a copy of the NCCS-issued U.S. Constitution to the media.
What is left of the constitutional statues of the usa is to protect the inaliable right that the goverment does not give (did not give them to begin with) to begin with but it puts and calls the puppets of the corrupt establishment while dressed/cloaked in democracy clothing are subverting it and abolishing at every turn. who is still singing the land of the free?
Also included here the bill of rights, including the right to life. Must not have meant that, because we kill in the womb.
The irony of deriding “conspiracy theories” while seeming to engage in one is pretty impressive.
By the way, that pocket constitution still has a great rating on Amazon because MOST PEOPLE WERE OKAY WITH IT.
Stop your liberal b.s. crying about a non-issue.
Hell, even Anheuser-Bush gives away free copies, though I had to check my gut when passing them out to students.
Way to roll some real garbage without a toxic warning label, dronepacker. I hope my new shoes don’t come with a stone to insert in them.
Besos wants us to believe if you want a copy, you have to pay for it. Way to sell out the nation and cover for the insane fringe, Besos.
poor idiotic and predictable socialists. outwitted at every turn. the reason it is there and selling so well is that the socialist dogma is going the way of the dinosaur. so predictable. equally sad, the ACLU like all other anti-American and socialist fear mongers, they can’t trust you to come to the same conclusion as they do concerning the Constitution. and heaven forbid you interoperate the same way our founding fathers wrote it. the lie is all the socialist has. which is why the movement is dying.
Your comment makes no sense, you should consider enrolling in a remedial writing class.
Hm, after so many articles about Khan and the constitution, I can definitely come to this conclusion:
I don’t give a damn what the heck Glenn Beck or anybody of the “Ultra-right” is doing. They do the sam thing they’ve been doing for eons. No surprise here.
I have no respect for Khan, who proudly encouraged his son to join what is essentially a mercenary army for banks and megacorps, where his son proceeded to slaughter innocent people under the guise of a “fight against terror” (terror that is instigated by America and its best buddies, not by its foes) until he himself got killed, which is neither surprising nor deserving of sympathy, and then the father happily lets himself be bribed by Hillary Clinton, a renowned war monger who played an influential role in the messy raid known as the Gulf Wars, in order to promote her and demonize Trump the Boogeyman. Basically, he is capitalizing on his own son’s death. Both he and his son are disgusting people, and they are right up Hillary’s alley.
And finally, I fail to see the joy and wonder of sending people links to or actual pamphlets of the constitution, regardless in which annotated form. What good will reading the constitution do? It has already been butchered by de facto events in politics and legal proceedings. Why bother analyzing it now? What, the constitution will tell us how to get out of the massive debt and economic crisis our banks have plunged us in? Will it tell us how to avoid a third world war that our politicians and bankers are hurrying to declare? Will it give us all of the neat details on how to set up a social-democracy in the States once and for all, and hand all corporate power to unions, and abolish the archaic tax system, slavery (incl. prison slavery and wage slavery), financial speculation, the pyramid-scheme insurance system, and private banking?
I really doubt it. The constitution itself is imperfect and somewhat dated. And more to the point, those who might be the most interested in reading it don’t have access to it, namely homeless people, wage slaves, farm slaves, immigrants etc. They were the disenfranchsied before this and they will continue being that afterwards, unless we completely erase capitalism and start from a social-democratic slate.
Remember what good the Code Civil and the Roman constitution did during the Napoleonic terror? While European soldiers and academics were poring over civil rights, democracy, freedom, equality yadda yadda, they were applauding Napoleon’s raiding of Egypt and Russia. Every American knows “all men are born equal”, and yet American history has myriad examples of slavery, capitalist exploitation, neo-colonialism and outright /ethnic cleansing/ and involuntary human experimentation. We all know about “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press”, but has that stopped the US Postal Service from reading mail and expurgating (or even just destroying) copies of socialist (“unAmerican”) literature? More than a few mainstream US publishing companies have issued out Complete Editions of writers like O. Henry, George Bernard Shaw or Mark Twain, but these editions often leave out works that are deemed too socialist (“The Millionairess”, anyone?). Fat lot freedom of speech and equality of all men does to the worker, the unioniser or the socialist. I’m reminded of the constitution written up by the liberated animals in Animal Farm, wherein all animals are deemed equal as well — that is, until Napoleon (an obvious Franco-expy) decides that some creatures are /more/ equal than others.
Freedom does not defend itself. The author treats university elites from Princeton in a different light than freedom fighters like “ultra right” activist Ammon Bundy.
I don’t necessarily agree with all of the Bundy’s tactics; but we should thank Providence for people willing to stand up to an out of control alphabet agency/Washington DC bureaucracies like the BLM drinking champagne and eating caviar back in the safety of the Beltway all the while reigning down petty tyranny over the former lands of the American Wild West. #1776
You’re angry at civil servants who barely make minimum wage? If you think government employees are eating caviar and sipping champagne, then you don’t know enough government employees.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/US-Bureau-of-Land-Management-Salaries-E41299.htm
I’m not sure why it’s newsworthy when Mormons buy books (especially since the schizoid, flip-flopping Beck despises Trump primarily for his popularity.) Khan’s support for Clinton is a monstrous hypocrisy, and that is a much larger issue: If this guy sincerely believes in liberty and equal rights, why can’t his wife speak in public? And how could he support a candidate like Hillary who profits from draconian drug policies, instead of working towards productive reforms?
https://theintercept.com/2015/07/23/private-prison-lobbyists-raising-cash-hillary-clinton/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/10/hillary-clinton-foundation-donors-hsbc-swiss-bank
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_america/2016-u-s-presidential-election/comey-hsbc-hillary/
https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=the%20mena%20connection
Democrats, as long as you’re looking for something to wave around in front of a podium and don’t necessarily care about reading, I’m sure this bookseller has a nice “decorative edition” you can carry with you instead: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/62
I was gonna say this is just smug, but I clicked on the arrows.
I liked the bentham-foot one, and loved the candyland one!
Hey Naomi, this article can only aspire to occupy the same sentence as Harry Potter. Seriously, it is completely lacking in focus. Who or what is it that you are actually taking exception to? Glenn Beck? The Mormons? The principles and values espoused by the 912 project (curious theses were never mentioned)? the National Center for Constitutional Studies? W. Cleon Skousen? Christianity? The faith based perspective of the founding fathers? Respect for the US constitution? Theism? Christianity? Or, all of the above.
Let’s assume for clarity sake that your primary concern is that some people might be influenced by Mr. Cleon Skousen’s “notes and annotations” when attempting to parse the founding father’s intentions. Let’s further assume that a small portion of these readers are then drawn to considering the views espoused by the 912 project. And Again, let’s assume that a fraction of these move on to weighing the merits of Cleon Skousen’s pro-christian, pro-family, pro-American, and anticommunist worldview. And lastly, let’s assume that that a small portion of the them actually read Tragedy and Hope by Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley. What’s the harm? Have you even bothered to read Tragedy and Hope before summarily dismissing the views espoused by American conservatives? let’s visit a few of their conclusions, shall we?
They argue (in part) that:
1. There has been a discernible shift away from Christian values in America; moral objectivism has given way to moral relativism.
2. There has been a discernible shift away from rugged individualism toward acceptance of secular, collectivist values within America. (this election cycle has witnessed a debate between those who purportedly oppose the long slide into corporatism (Sanders, Stein etc.) and those that endorse it (Obama and Hillary Clinton). Everyone of the progressive left however embraces the notion of collectivism in one form or another.
3. The founder’s emphasis on individual freedoms has been systematically eroded with the rise of federalism
4. The the Federal Reserve system is essentially dominated and controlled by private financiers whose own fortunes are closely tied to Fed policy.
5. The World Bank, The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Union are all facilitators of a Neoliberal, post WWII international monetary system that has been used to regulate the international monetary and financial order since the Breton Woods Conference in 1944.
6. There has been a systematic, conscious intent to inculcate the various cultures of the world with a common set of modern values by deemphasizing and/or supplanting traditional beliefs and moral values with those that best facilitate the aims of transnational capital interests; regime change has become the order of the day and Islam has become its primary target. Legally mandated inclusivity and multiculturalism are the veil behind which the creep of conformity and compliance are advanced.
Yes, let’s talk about the role of Khizr Khan and his son…
Seems to me that Khizr and company have an agenda to proppagate hillary proppaganda.
i would be most interested to hear his solution to the deaths of sons in Palestine, but perhaps that is off limits to him. DT was trying to get them to talk, to exercise free speech, but his speech on behalf of hillary wasnt free, it was staged.
Interactive theater that promotes the illusion of choice…
I stopped reading when you linked to the SPLC everything they put up is crap.
Trump needs to learn to counter-punch and move.
All contain here in the comments:
The Kham family paid full measure.
The Bushes and Clintons have taken full measure to include many of our fallen and much collateral death in undeclared wars.
I missed the part that says it endows rights to noncitizens. Can someone tell me where that one is?
So, you missed the part which says “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”?
If we are also guaranteed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then why are we able end an unborn human’s life, legally, from the womb?
The first articles of the constitution of the USA specifically
mention the rights of “citizens” and their representatives,
but the first 10 amendments (the Bill of Rights)
address the rights of ” people.”
Those rights are supposedly not limited to citizens or they would
have said they were, like the other rights from the preceding articles
of that constitution.
Of course, if you were a woman or a slave, then you were not
really a citizen or a whole person in the eyes of the founding
Paternalists.
Indeed, in all advanced nations, everyone in the country is governed by the same laws, with some minor exceptions. So, if you happen to be a non-citizen and are accused of a crime, you are afforded the same protection under law as a citizen. And, if you run afoul of the laws of another civilized country, you are subject to the laws that exist there.
so much for free copies, guess everyone and anyone that has been reading about the Khan’s wanted their free unannotated version and not pay for a religious groups interpretation.
Very happy to read that Americans are reading the Constitution. Obama has made great use of interpreting it during his presidency. Hillary seems to be overriding it as usual. Perhaps a right wing version will bring balance to our culture. I like Jeff Bezos.
Or perhaps a comic book version.
Personally, I think Luther had it right: publish the thing without commentary and let the people read it and interpret it for themselves. But, like Luther, I labor under the possible delusion that most people, given the impetus and opportunity, are quite capable of thinking for themselves.
Or a comic book version, even better.
Personally, I think Luther had it right: make the unadorned text available to people, so that those who have the motivation and independence of thought to do so can make their own interpretations.
And Jeff Bezos’ principal contribution has been to put book publishers out of business. (His second is helping the CIA.)
I want to see the Jack Chick Tract of the U.S. Constitution.
So the constitution is ultra right? I must be a lot more conservative than I thought of else the author of this article is an idiot.
Or alternatively you did not read the article very carefully.
you got it right. the author is an idiot.
Naaahh. She doesn’t think people can tell quotes from content, akin to ads on the sides of the web page.
If only the Founders had given us freedom “from” religion instead of freedom of religion. Organized religion is and has been the single greatest cause of mayhem and strife on the planet.
Correction: Private banking is and has been the single greatest cause of mayhem and strife on the planet.
There is nothing wrong with organized religion, except the fact that bankers and war-mongers use it in order to manipulate poor workers who can’t be manipulated via TV, Internet or other more modern methods. There are a lot of people in the States who don’t have digital gadgets of any kind, but have some ties with religious communities or with “fist” farmers (as in, farmers who are actually capitalists and own large ranches or plantations where illegals and undocumenteds, ranging from prison slaves to vagrants and mentally handicapped people, slave all day and all night, rotating their crops in every season).
No religion on Earth promotes war, greed or bigotry. And sects like “Mormons” don’t count, because they aren’t religions, they’re pseudo-masonic cults started by con-artists.
A real Christian cannot be anything but a social-democrat, because Jesus condemned bankers and patriarchs, and announced that all men and women are equal, and society ought to employ everybody fairly and pay everybody fairly, and punish criminals who interfere with that system. I hate it when journalists (either purposefully or through sheer ignorance) equate an entire religion with some self-proclaimed religious fanatic who actually espouses the ideology that is completely opposite to the religion’s core tenets. It’s like if a turd called itself a rose, and then a journalist came along and declared that all roses stink and should be flushed down the toilet.
It’s some kind of reversed pseudo-syllogism fallacy that religious fanatics bank on: they hope to get followers with their extremist facade; and at the same time, they hope to besmirch the whole religion with their deeds.
Wow! I guess your study of history did not include the time before the beginning of the 21st century. In the versions that I have read, the Abrahamic religions preceded private banking by as much as millennia; and both early Christianity and Islam proscribed lending money (which according to some is why Jews got involved in the business). Lots of wars, the Crusades for instance, were fought for largely religious reasons, and the Thirty Years War that ravaged Europe was entirely over religion.
I would agree with you were you to ascribe to religious leaders the same attributes that you bestow on bankers, for in my experience most of the hierarchy in any of the western religions seems to be inhabited by people who use religion to gain power, and in some cases even riches, for themselves. Though the Roman Catholics have a reputation for this, they have nothing to teach the US Evangelicals.
Lol. So it is very extreme because it says “God” and that the feds shouldn’t be involved in our personal lives. How extreme…
Trump should have simply said “Yes, I have read the Constitution, several times in fact, but Mr. Khan, you don’t decide what is constitutional, the Supreme Court does.”
Not that I disagree with you, but there is no evidence whatsoever that he has in fact ever read the Constitution. To cite only one instance, his ban on Muslims entering the country would in effect be an establishment of a religion, which is unconstitutional. And although it is clear that he has an idea of what the 2nd Amendment says, he like the NRA either does not know, or chooses to ignore, the contents of Article 1, Section 8.
Want more examples? How about the 1st Amendment? Or Article 3, Section 3 (which, incidentally, is one that practically nobody on the right seems to understand or be aware of)? Or Article 2, Section 2? I could go on for hours.
He changed his wording to people of the region in flux,not Muslims,so he recognized the Unconstitutional aspect of his statement.
This Khan pos is an example of a quisling shilling for the very people who got his son killed for absolutely nothing in Iraq,and Trump is the only guy to call that what it is and was,a disaster.
A world of BS,all from zion.
The Constitution does not permit invasion and destruction of sovereign nations. The guy’s son died from ‘a suicide bomber’ … Oh, the humanity. Meanwhile in Iraq; 1 million dead and counting.
In my line of work, Trump’s changes in wording are termed a “stochastic process”. But you go on, hanging on every one. I don’t know what is worse, people who cannot ever admit being wrong, or those so infatuated with them that they are unable to see the sham.
Further evidence that DJT, HRC, and the rest of the political cohort don’t read or don’t care what the U.S. Const. says is provided by them spewing the “no fly no buy” bullshit – violating due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
Unplugging the TV is working. :) I love that I have no idea who is Mr. Khan. Turning off the TV is definitely working.
At this point, I wouldn’t dream of watching the RNC nor the DNC. I’d expect both broadcasts to be pure propaganda and lies. There hasn’t been any sign of ‘democracy’ at a US convention in at least 30 years.
And, oh, BTW, I’ve got the ACLU’s printing of the Constitution sitting on my front table, and can quickly find the text on the internets when I want to review what it says. This has become a very strange country if advice to read the constitution is considered to be ‘Breaking News’.
And, oh, btw, did the Hillary speakers mention the part about how the nation can only go to war when Congress votes to go to war, and that the Founders deliberately tried to make sure that the President could not just start a war on his/her own because they viewed that as a threat to Liberty?
USA CONSTITUTION
Changes will be made to the USA CONSTITUTION and will apply to all territories under USA jurisdiction:
– Free and Universal Healthcare for all USA citizens and peoples that enter USA;
– Free and Universal Education as long as a USA citizen wishes to study (from grade 1 to Postdoctoral studies), including for visiting students from Partner Universities, from around the whole World;
– Decent work, with decent salary for a decent human life and a decent retirement;
– 5 weeks of paid holidays (of which 1 free of charge week will be devoted to Wisdom Travel around the World to meet other cultures and religions, it will complete Education through life experience);
– Creation of Wisdom Travel Agency run by a proportional secular and multi-confessional Committee, constituted 90% by students and working with similar Partner Committees around the whole World;
– Return of the USA Central Bank (Federal Reserve) to its citizens and under the scrutiny of its citizens;
– Return of the USA Armed Forces to its citizens, external intervention and help systematically submitted to a Nationwide Referendum;
– …
Healthcare is a right to life.
Education is a right to protect from ignorance.
Decent work is a right to live.
Banks and money are to facilitate trade not to speculate.
Armed forces protect USA, it is not a mercenary tool to invade Iraq (2001) and keep a blind eye in front of the Rwandan Genocide (1994).
Why salaries start at $7/hour for some and go to $300/hour and above for others?
It is evident that a pizzailo and a heart surgeon cannot be paid the same, but some discrepancies are not justified.
nice.
i want to see this on a participatory website
and the country needs that as well
there is a lot of talent on this board here
later, we will call for the new continental congress of by and for “the will” of the people.
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/01/clinton-cash-khizr-khans-deep-legal-financial-connections-saudi-arabia-hillarys-clinton-foundation-connect-terror-immigration-email-scandals/
dont ask.
The connections Mr. Khan has to Saudi Arabia and The Clinton Foundation are interesting:
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/08/01/clinton-cash-khizr-khans-deep-legal-financial-connections-saudi-arabia-hillarys-clinton-foundation-connect-terror-immigration-email-scandals/
The constitution (of what is now the faking U$A) was deliberately
written to be subject to widely varying interpretations.
Other than in the delineations regarding the branches,
legislative, executive, and judicial and the worship of
private property, the constitution used words to
camouflage as much as reveal its own purpose.
This is especially true in the so-called “Bill of Rights”
which are commonly touted as if they are specific protections
when they are actually (and deliberately?) not specific.
Of the great flim-flam artists who have inhabited the halls of
power in Washington D.C., there have been few who come close
to the disingenuous “pragmatism” of James Madison, especially
in his scheme to save slavery known as the 3/5ths compromise.
People brandish the constitution as if it is the epitome of integrity
when the fact is that it is an early manifestation of triangulation
and patriarchal pretentiousness which continues to
be the basis of corrupt interpretations by those with more money.
Nice one Clarke! Now get your cape on and save us! :)
Get your own “cape” on.
First, each of us has to remove the heavy, limiting armored state.
This is done by changing our lifestyles and reducing our
consuming delusions and recognizing that our family includes
every other person and environment on the whole planet.
No reduction of arrogant delusions will be coming from
the democrats or republicans. The toxic armor is what
gives their lives meaning.
The article would have been a lot better if the author would have actually cited examples from Skousen’s annotations that are wrong or biased. Instead we just get a bunch of guilt by association and righty right right rightnut aspersions. And Sean Wilentz is hardly any authority on constitutional law and the Bill of Rights. Ask Glenn Greenwald.
Trump made an error in judgement!
Rather than hammering the dems, he should have hammered the Bush’s for the stupidity of having troops there in the first place.
You are correct without question Bush Ordered War, sent My Protectors Honorable Patriot Military
I live in central Oregon, and having a pocket constitution, was tantamount to having the fabled “tin foil hat”!
I printed my U.S. constitution, (pocket sized, naturally) from a website that also suggests making Christmas tree ornaments out of them!
On the one hand we have spy drones, and cops using stingrays, which tin foil probably wouldn’t help against,
and on the other hand we had/have Abu Ghraib, water boarding, and other Creative interpretations of the Truths we hold to be self evident.
Our founding father’s had an average education equivalent to 7 years of college, along with the average person (never minding the lack of education for women, or non WASP people) at that time.
So yea read the constitution, it’s in the public domain, along with everything from the codes of Manu , Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, upto the likes of de Tocqueville,! Sure get “edumacated”&
Oh yea! Put your phone in a copper case, that’d block the signals.
What’s extra frustrating about Trump’s reaction to Khan is that it was so unnecessary. War heroes and the families of war heroes believe all sorts of things, and we don’t have to fall in line and do whatever they say – we just have to show fair respect.
If the Khans had not been allowed to immigrate, their son would not have died fighting for America; but on average some other family from some other country would presumably have immigrated in their place, and done the same. We can’t say from that that we have to have some set number of Muslims coming into the country. Of course, when you talk hypotheticals, if Obama had sat down in a different chair, ordered a different item at the restaurant, signed an order for the use of force on a different minute, maybe this soldier would have been standing out of harm’s way at that second. There’s what could have happened, which we don’t really know, and what did happen, which can’t change.
The thing for Trump to do is to say that Americans are Americans, and he respects all Americans including the Muslims, and their constitutional rights, and certainly he respects this family; but that his policy for new immigration has priorities, and whenever there are priorities some will benefit from them and some will lose from them, and whoever loses is someone who might have come to America and done great things but now will not, no matter who that is.
But attacking the family, impugning their motivations, making nasty guesswork about the mother’s feelings… this was not good. Where there is grief there is a temple of the Lord, because grief is proportional to love, an expression of it, and when the bricks of love are piled on as high and thick as the grief that surrounds the parents of a dead child, then to do anything harmful within that mighty cathedral is to commit a sin in the sight of the Lord.
” making nasty guesswork about the mother’s feelings… ”
well, i think he was inviting her to speak, in an awkward way. clumsy even.
I believe he relishes what women have to say. He likes women to have personal power. Definitely not afraid of women or rejection. It was awkward. But he did not condemn them as the media have “condemned” him without first paying him the respect of being clumsy.
Oh, yes: He’s such a sensitive guy.
I may consider giving their annotations a read. It’s always nice to see how other people contextualize the constitution.
“It emphasizes that the federal government should not interfere in people’s lives.”
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? Or should the federal government have a say on to whom do you pray to, sleep and marry with, what you do with your own body and property, what are you allowed to think and say? I don’t get your point.
Whom you can kill or rob…
It’s nearly impossible to find – except for anarchists – someone who disputes the public safety as part of the proper role of a government.
Actually is very stupid to level babysitting and law enforcement as priorities of a government. But why not, right?
that is a stereotype… and a poorly informed on, of what exactly anarchists are.
I did not stereotype what anarchists are, nor did I try to define it.
The argument is about what is/are the proper role of a government (government being the entity anarchists oppose to).
I only mentioned anarchists to justify the “nearly impossible” adverb + adjective combo.
“what you do with your own . . . property”: in short, yes. If I own a chemical plant, and decide to simply dump the waste onto my own property, and it gets into an aquifer or the nearby river, is that still allowed? Or, if I have a bunch of old tires and decide to just burn them rather than taking them to be recycled, is it OK that I do so? Like, isn’t the ground under the chemical plant or the air over my back yard part of my property?
To me the answer is No. And there is even an expression for it: The Tragedy of the Commons. As it belongs to everyone, anyone can do as they please, so pristine forests are logged, rivers and the air are polluted, and so on. One can hardly blame the writers of the Constitution for being ignorant of the deleterious effects humans have on the rest of Nature, but it has gotten to be a real problem. But it is nonetheless necessary, now that the world’s population has grown by a factor of 10 or more, and the industrial age has happened, to limit what an individual can do in terms of the use and misuse of natural resources.
These externalities you point out exceeds the concept of one’s own property, thus, of course, law enforcement should prevent this to happen or punish once it happened. In this case we are not talking about “own property” anymore.
Still, should this be up to federal government? Or states could do it better?
And then again, emphasizing the federal government should not interfere in people’s lives is a bad thing?
I do not disagree with most of what you contend, but the issue I raised is contentious. The state of Texas, for one, allows oil companies to dump toxic waste into the air and rivers – they go so far as to prohibit the enforcement of some EPA regulations. And that illustrates the fallacy of states’ rights: if polluted air from Texas drifts over Louisiana or Arkansas or Oklahoma or New Mexico, there is nothing the people in those states can do about it.
Texas is certainly not alone. Fertilizer run off from Midwestern red states have turned the northwestern portion of the Gulf of Mexico into a cesspool, a dead zone in which very little life exists. Ask a Texas or Louisiana shrimper how they like the Iowa’s or Wisconsin’s rights to practice farming however they want.
I am not so sure about it. Going further in your train of thought, when pollution from US trespass into Mexico, you say it should have a global entity that could enforce decisions and all sovereign(?) nations would be forced to comply? I mean, it is always impossible for neighbors to solve an issue without a third party ruling over?
Anyone heard of PROCON? May test your patience going through this video, but the last 10 minutes are quite stunning.
Lots of conspiracy theories in this video, except that some very credible persons have come out as whistle-blowers.
We are going to have to throw a lot of people over the wall. No, not just the wall that is going to be built by Mexico’s money, but existing prison walls. Mein Gott!
there are 250,000,000 people in poverty south of the border just itching to crash our border.
1,000,000 approx have crashed our border since 1975
i dont build stuff to crowd the place up
i dont build stuff to be robbed or diluted
i build stuff so i can spend my life ENJOYING WHAT I BUILD, pass on free and clear to my children, not work for goddamn wallstreet thieves notr condemn my children to them
I think it was a mistake of Khan to say Trump has a “black soul,” as it makes it sound as though the Donald could do a passable James Brown. Which I doubt very much.
I also agree, but what to do? You have to see his Paki roots and overlook his mistakes.
His son was killed by the very people that Donald Trump says are bad. Those Paki people are excellent people, generally, and especially when it comes to making mistakes. They also forgot to inform us that Osama bin Terror was producing babies in their proximate neighborhood. Mistake … that we created all these terrorists there to bring down USSR and then left them to flourish on their own.
You’re a reprehensible pile of racist shit.
It’s really too bad that the U.S. Constitution didn’t ban discrimination based on race at the same time it banned discrimination based on religion. This would have solved a lot of problems.
Oh,don’t worry,the Hell bitch and her zionist masters are working on the citizenchip,where all thoughts unwanted are self cleansed.
One thing that gets me going is the hubris of the holier than thou,who have the exact same prejudices or similar to those who voice theirs,but they don’t voice them for cowardice.
We are all made of the same clay.
The Avalon Project at Yale Law http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ hosts a treasure trove of historical, law and diplomacy documents sorted by century and then alphabetized. The US Constitution is there, and the entire site is free.
The pocket edition by the ACLU is excellent
Everything in America is fake
woah dude
Everything in America is a fraud, from the sock puppet press to the coin operated politicians
Inquiring minds need to know the difference in sales numbers before and after Khizer’s Rant. The spike in sales may have actually began before Khizer’s Rant and was induced by the jolly General Allen’s BOO RAH Rant https://youtu.be/oYuH5fKUn_0
Before Khizer’s Rant even started. Remember Khizer & Ghalaza came on after the jolly General.
We witnessed the General talking about killing Bad Muslims , before the Good Muslims Khizer & Ghazala , the “Gold Star” parents..came on to talk about TRumpitus and NOT about Muslims killing Muslims .
The Skouken’s Constitution sales may also have skyrocketed after the RNC a few days before!
..Off topic, but why do they give gold stars to parents of dead soldiers?
In every other endeavor, a gold star is a symbol of accomplishment..
Because they raised a brave child who sacrificed for their country, or at least their comrades in arms. (Whether the deployment itself was good for the country is irrelevant.)
Meanwhile Obama is simply ignoring the Constitution altogether and warring like a motherfucker without Congressional approval.
Why Maisie….your language is better than mine……………!!!!!
Actually Obama legally has that right. When Congress is unable to do it duty .it them becomes the setting Presidents judgement. If in fact the. Rep Congress has chosen to not do its duty since Obama presidency. If you are able to find a statement made by Banhnor on Nation TV” The Republican Congress will not consider any of Obama’s proposals.” That was in Obama first term and has continued
What you have claimed is absolute nonsense. The Constitution specifies that for “significant military action” (which this is), there must be Congressional approval.
Time to revisit this classic:
http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-passionate-defender-of-what-he-imagines-c-2849
I recollect having read that, while working at the NSA, Mr. Snowden kept a copy of the US Constitution close to hand in order, sometimes, to raise issues with fellow workers. I trust, then, that he had an ACLU or similarly kosher / halal edition, not a haram one.
noami lachance may well be right. but i never learned why she is right. what is it, aside from guilty by association, that makes this edition so bad? that would be very interesting to learn about, and well worth the intrigue and enlightenment. otherwise, it reads a lot like the Inquirer or People magazine.
if I can salvage any ideas out of this it is that the federal government should interfere in people’s lives. I’m not sure why — it may be a good idea, but lachance never addresses why, or even what. It would be nice to give examples, or some reasoning. As it is, i t reads like a gossip column.
You should have read the article, and even opened some of the links, before commenting. Doing that would have *possibly helped you to have posted a more educated comment.
How about one example of how this edition is in error? (it may well be, but the article does not demonstrate it)
Thank you so much for following this up! Jon Ritzheimer, shown in your pic, with his FUCK ISLAM tee shirts, is the second-greatest muslim hater in this country after Trump.
The Skousen annotations are dangerous and wrong, and inspire too many of the US gun-toting militias and Sov Cits.
I’m so sad this is happening. I think I need to go write a review on Amazon!
Maybe the Donald’s friends in Russia could put that ProductID in an infinite loop to the Fulfillment Center’s Jackpot rejects.
Khizr Kahn is misguided and misled and corrupted.
Had he given his situation with the death of his son proper thought, he would have realised that hillary j clinton was responsible for the death of his son. Had Donald Trump been president, his son would be alive today. But Khizr fails to see that. Instead he listens to hillarious and wants a second go-round at getting his other children killed in her calamities and your children as well.
Khizr has been bullied into the “i need to make a sacrifice game to prove i love america”. Someone needs to tell Mr. Kahn that he’s been conned.
Not to mention that his logic: “my Muslim son got wasted in one of W’s stoopid wars, therefore America must open its gates wide to all Muslims who wish to settle it” is not exactly… Well, I guess we can have ‘new logic’ after ‘new math’ proved itself to be so useful.
Corrupted? And besides that, somewhat circular logic. Had Donald Trump been president when Mr. Kahn came to this country, he would not have been allowed in; thus what he said is right. Moreover, Trump’s response to Kahn’s speech shows him for the bigot that he is.
I agree that Hillary is a warmonger, but Trump would make war on his own people.
respectfully, Mr. Kahn would have been allowed in because had Trump been president, ISIS would never have happened because IRAQ would never have happened.
Trump is apparently whatever you want him to be. Except an opponent of the Iraq War, when it mattered, in 2002.
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=donald+trump+on+iraq+war+2002&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-002
Note, too Trump’s cowardly deflection: well I wasn’t a politician then! LOL Yeah well maybe you shouldn’t have gone on the fucking Howard Stern show and supported it, asshole, you not having been a politician at all.
I swear, with this gratuitous, uncalled-for idiocy, and the re-elect Netanyahu ad Trump did, how do people like barabbas and dahoit come to believe Trump somehow has some kind of principled stand against the totally usual, utterly bi-partisan hack Washington DC insider blowing American foreign policy?
You answered your own question on the first line. . .
“Trump is apparently whatever you want him to be. ”
I understand the corn kernels in his turds can be read by braille …
So is it your theory that had there not been an Iraq war, Trump would not have been an Islamophobe?
If so, what is the basis? Like, for instance, did he ever say, something like, “You know, before the Iraq war I was a big fan of Islam, wanted to have lots of Muslims moving here to enrich the diversity of our society”?
Somehow I can’t picture it. But I must admit, the man has said so many things, assumed so many self-contrary positions, I would not rule it out.
i do not believe he is phobe anything. He is cautious about people’s motives and has a distrust when he senses a strike. That’s his business acumen. It works for him. My basis for this is my own personal sense of having known people that know him. That’s all i will say about that.
There are 3 ways to success in business.
1. establish a monopoly, and keep it
2. make a deal so good it destroys the other party
3. give your negotiatee what s/he wants and have a bankruptcy on the ready
there are NO OTHER WAYS.
his relationship with others is #2 and #3. All depends on who he is dealing with. He has no objections to anyone’s way of life. What he sees is the operating environment in the US going to hell. He believes he can fix it. For sure, WDC cannot fix it.
As far as offering any support for iraq, it would only be lip service so as not to be divisive at the time. The key is his statement about war being a losing deal. Listen to his philosophy, not his cover.
barabbas you are like a teeny bopper with a crush where Trump is concerned.
“only lip service so as not to be divisive at the time” ???
But “listen to his philosophy, not his cover”? I wouldn’t do this favor for anyone I admired, much less a walking hyped up punchline like Donald Trump.
The actions of Zionism,and the responding terror by Islamic fundamentalists has made America Islamaphobe,all brought to US by Israel and divide and conquer.
Mr.Khan is a pos ,probably received his 30 pieces of silver for backing the very monsters who have made the world of his ancestors shite.
George Bush Ordered the War. Bush sent My protectors Honorable Patriot Military to War, Bush left the America with Pain, Saddness, a War left for New President. Which is Obama. Hillary didn’t start a War,she didn’t cause hatred of My Great Country
All I can find that trump said about the Khans was that they “Didn’t say anything (Implied New? )” “Maybe they weren’t allowed to say anything.” Which is sorta-kinda correct if somewhat missing the point. Sure they didn’t provide alternative solutions to replace the fortress mentality Trump is promoting, but that wasn’t exactly their purpose.
Trump either missed or didn’t especially care for their “Tone it down” point because it wasn’t “A solution” he could steal.
BS.Total.If Trump was POTUS in the 80s we wouldn’t be in this chaotic future of zionists running America,and by extention the whole ME would be at peace,instead of the pieces it is in caused by Zionism,and its lockhold on US.
Even Reagan recognized the futility of American involvement in Lebanon,when he withdrew the provocative marines.
Do you think the HB would withdraw the marines,if she was in power?
You can also purchase a copy from the US Government Publishing Office (GPO) at https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/052-071-01545-1
I have about 5 copies of the GPO version; the ACLU formerly sent out copies to anyone who made a moderate size donation.
And oh, by the way, the GPO version is the official one, without annotation. I suppose that is why Jeff Bezos won’t allow it to be sold at his site.
Everything that we don’t like had to be banned and destroyed.
has not had