"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Jury Refuses to Convict Anyone for Marijuana Possession!
"A judge in Montana was unable to seat a jury in a marijuana possession case because no one was willing to even sit on the jury in order to hear the case."
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"For more than six hundred years --- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 --- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws." ~ An Essay on the Trial by Jury by Lysander Spooner*
*"Lysander Spooner has many great distinctions in the history of political thought. For one thing, he was undoubtedly the only constitutional lawyer in history to evolve into an individualist anarchist; for another, he became steadily and inexorably more radical as he grew older."
Constitutionalists revere the Magna Carta, but if they were to read it, they'd be baffled. Expecting to find, as libertarian Constitutionalist Ken Krawchuk says, "many of the rights we still enjoy today," they'd find themselves adrift in an alien, feudal world of "aids," "wardship," "scutage," "knight service," "reliefs," "wainage," "castle guard," "socage," "burgage," and other arcana even medievalists toil to comprehend.
Magna Carta -- extorted from King John by a few dozen rebellious barons in 1215, a dead letter within three months, voided by England's feudal overlord, the Pope -- did almost nothing for almost all of England's two million people. It confirmed or created privileges for churchmen and barons, occasionally for knights, and in only two instances for "free men." Most Englishmen were villeins, not freemen. And as historian Sidney Painter has written, "Whenever provisions of the Charter seem to benefit the ordinary man, a close examination will show that it is his lord's pocketbook that is the real cause of concern." It was only a question of who would do the fleecing.
The Great Charter has nothing to say about free speech, unreasonable searches and seizures, self-incrimination, the right to bear arms, free exercise of religion, the obligation of contracts, ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, rights of petition and assembly, excessive bail, the right to counsel, cruel and unusual punishments, indictment by grand jury, etc., etc. Far from forbidding even involuntary servitude, it presupposes it (chs. 17, 20 and 23). Far from forbidding the establishment of religion, it confirms it in its very first provision (ch. 1).
The real Magna Carta was not even remotely libertarian.
above excerpt from:
"CONSTITUTIONALISM": THE WHITE MAN'S GHOST DANCE
by Robert C. Black
http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/black/sp001650.html
That is a great link White Indian.
I like Bob Black's writing. You can find quite a few of his articles at http://primitivism.com/author-index.htm My favorite article of his is The Abolition of Work.
"No one should ever work.
"Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work..."
:)
Quoting this article turns most Libertarian/An-Cap/Capitalists into blithering Free Republic neo-Cons. Which is pretty much what they are anyway, with a thin veneer of "liberty" whitewash that sluices away so quickly.
This is old news, happened about a year ago according to my Montana friends.