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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Saturday, April 13, 2013

California is under attack by Federal Judges


My 10th Amendment Fantasy Press Conference.
A Governor of a major state calls up a unit of his National Guard.  Then in front of the press with cameras rolling the Governor reads the 10th Amendment of the Constitution and tells Congress and the Courts to go screw themselves.


Insane Federal Judges say the Governor of California has 20 days to fix overcrowded prisons or be put on trial
  • The insane Federal Judges have already forced the release of thousands of convicted felons back into society.
  • Federal judges intrude into totally internal matters of the states.
  • Governors around the nation hide in fear under their desks refusing to stand up against unconstitutional acts by Congress and the Courts.


A world of liberal unconstitutional madness.

In California the Federal Courts have already released thousands of convicted criminals into society just because they wanted to.  They have also dictated to the state how much money to spend in medical care and other issues. 

The power to spend tax money belongs to the elected legislature, not to unelected Dictators with judicial robes. 

In a world gone mad the only answer is Gandhi style non-cooperation.  When the judges and Congress demand something crazy the states should simply ignore the order and refuse in any way to cooperate.  Play the media game.  A Governor could say "I am not going to take money from children with cancer to coddle convicted felons."

The Governor of the People's Republic of California and other leading authorities will be held in contempt of court in 20 days unless they find a way to release thousands of prisoners from the overcrowded state corrections system.


A panel of wacko Federal judges gave Gov. Jerry Brown and the state’s top corrections officials an ultimatum this week, ordering they come up with solution to the rampant overcrowding epidemic that has caused critics to condemn the treatment endured by prisoners as“cruel and unusual” — or else face the consequences.

If Gov. Brown and his colleagues cannot come up with a plan in the next three weeks that will slash the number of inmates in the state’s 33 prisons by December, the court says they will take legal action against the officials reports RT News USA.

According to a corrections department report released this week, the state prison system presently counts 119,542 inmates as residents of those facilities, or 149.5 percent of the number those buildings were designed to hold. In a 71-page ruling described by the Los Angeles Times as “blistering,” a panel of three judges says that portion must be brought down to 137.5 percent by the end of the year.

That could mean releasing roughly 9,500 inmates by December if no other solution is found.
In an opinion piece published in the New York Times this week, the paper’s editorial board notes that 30 percent of the California prison population suffers from mental illness, and that the suicide rate among inmates is nearly twice the national average.

Judge Lawrence Karlton of Federal District Court in Sacramento wrote in a filing earlier this month that the treatment subjected on the seriously mentally ill violates prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment, and that conditions continue to be sub-par despite issuing more than 100 court orders against the prison system in the last 17 years.

All the way back in May 2011, the Supreme Court said California had two years to fix the overcrowding issue, ordering them even then to get the number of inmates held in the state system down to the 137.5 percent figure. Then last August, a federal panel including Judge Karlton said the state was obligated to immediately figure out which prisoners are "unlikely to re-offend or who might otherwise be candidates for early release,” hoping to start shedding numbers then.

Comrade Governor Jerry Brown
People's Republic of California
The state, wrote the panel in 2012, must take “all steps necessary” to reach the population limit set by the Supreme Court.

But this January, Gov. Brown and Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard filed a motion asking for the state to soften the number of inmates that must be released, and threatened to take their appeal to the US Supreme Court if the lesser justices shuts them down.

"The prison emergency is over in California," Brown said at a press conference that month.

"California is a powerful state. We can run our own prisons. And by God, let those judges give us our prisons back. We'll run them right,” he said.

The federal panel fired back this week, though, threatening to hold those officials in contempt "individually and collectively” if they cannot immediately find a way that would bring numbers down by December.

"California still houses far more prisoners than its system is designed to house," the judges ruled. "At no point over the past several months have defendants indicated any willingness to comply, or made any attempt to comply, with the orders of this court," they said. "In fact, they have blatantly defied them."

That threat against Brown and company was made reluctantly, wrote the court, "but with determination that defendants will not be allowed to continue to violate the requirements of the Constitution of the United States."

"It's a crushing blow to the governor's efforts to get out from under the population cap," Donald Specter, lead attorney for the Prison Law Office, tells Mercury News. "He's burned whatever bridge there is."


“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.” 
James Madison

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