Saturday, November 24, 2012

On Impeachment



“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Article II, Section 4


“The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”

Article I, Section 2


“The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.”

Article I, Section 3



During the administration of President George W. Bush, seeing signs and bumper stickers reading “Impeach Bush” was common. Following the Benghazi incident in which four Americans were killed by terrorists at a Libyan consulate, the revelation that President Obama may have ignored requests to send backup during the attack has led to an outcry for impeachment by critics of Obama. But under what circumstances may a sitting president be impeached?

According to the Constitution, the President may be impeached if he or she is convicted of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Impeachment, in the U.S. and Great Britain, proceeding by a legislature for the removal from office of a public official charged with misconduct in office. Impeachment comprises both the act of formulating the accusation and the resulting trial of the charges; it is frequently but erroneously taken to mean only the removal from office of an accused public official. An impeachment trial may result in either an acquittal or in a verdict of guilty. In the latter case the impeached official is removed from office; if the charges warrant such action, the official is also remanded to the proper authorities for trial before a court.


Impeachment is brought in the House of Representatives and may be initiated by any member. The House Committee on the Judiciary which determines by majority vote whether grounds for impeachment are present. If grounds for impeachment are found to be present, the House Committee on the Judiciary makes a recommendation and presents the articles to the entire House. The House of Representatives then votes on each article. A simple majority is necessary to bring an impeachment trial to the Senate. The impeachment trial of a president is conducted in the Senate and presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. A two third majority vote of Senators is necessary to convict a president on any article of impeachment.

Two presidents have been impeached, but neither was convicted. In 1867 President Andrew Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act, which stated that the president may not remove an official whose appointment required confirmation by the Senate without the approval of the Senate. The Senate refused to concur with Johnson’s replacement of Secretary of War Edward Stanton with Ulysses Grant. President Andrew Johnson was impeached on 11 articles relating to his removal of Stanton. Johnson was acquitted when the Senate fell one vote short to convict him. Years later, in the case of Myers v. United States (1926), the Supreme Court further exonerated Johnson by holding that the president has exclusive authority to remove executive branch officials because the Constitution was silent on requiring the advice and consent of the Senate in doing so. In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached on one charge of perjury and one charge of obstruction of justice in connection with grand jury testimony Clinton gave in connection with his relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky in a lawsuit brought by Paula Jones against Clinton. The Senate fell seventeen votes short of the total needed to convict Clinton on the charges.

In order to fully understand the criteria for impeaching a president, the meaning of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” must be determined. The Constitution clearly lists treason and bribery as impeachable offenses, but for what other actions may a president face impeachment? According to Constitutional scholar Professor Stephen B. Presser of Northwestern University School of Law, “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” was a “term of art used in English impeachments.” From this, Professor Presser concludes, “the grounds for impeachment can be not only the defined crimes of treason and bribery, but also other criminal or even noncriminal behavior amounting to a serious dereliction of duty.” If this is true, then it is a feature of the separation of powers that it is up to the House of Representatives to determine whether there is a prima facie case for a serious enough crime or “dereliction of duty” on part of a president, and it is up to the Senate to determine whether the president is in fact guilty of those charges. 

Jon Roland of the Constitution Society further explains that "high" crimes are "those punishable offenses that only apply to high persons, that is, to public officials, those who, because of their official status, are under special obligations that ordinary persons are not under, and which could not be meaningfully applied or justly punished if committed by ordinary persons."

The sobering fact of the matter is that a strong case could be made that each American president over the last thirty years should have been impeached.

President Ronald Reagan

In 1982, Congress passed the Boland Amendment aimed at limiting the aid given by the federal government to the Contras, a fascistic rebel Nicaraguan rebel group that was attempting to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government. In 1984, Congress strengthened the Boland act to make it nearly impossible to give any aid to the Contras. In 1985, the Reagan administration sold more than 1,500 missiles to Iran, which was at the time at war with then American ally Iraq. At the time there was an embargo against selling arms to Iran. In exchange for the missiles, Iran paid money and also agreed to facilitate the release of seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. The proceeds of the arms sale were funneled to the Contras in violation of the Boland Amendment.

After the Iran-Contra Affair came to light, President Reagan appointed a three man commission – the Tower Commission – the Tower Commission – to investigate. The Tower Commission and a separate Congressional investigation concluded that President Reagan had no knowledge of the full extent of the Iran-Contra Affair. Eleven individuals – Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, government contractor Carl R. Channell, CIA agent Thomas G. Clines, Chief of the CIA’s Central American Task Force Alan D. Fliers, Jr., Deputy Director for CIA Operations Clair E. George, Iranian-American businessman Albert Hakim, National Security Advisor to President Reagan from 1983 to 1985 Robert C. McFarlane, fundraiser Richard R. Miller, National Security Council staffer Oliver L. North, Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor for the Reagan administration John M. Poindexter, and Air Force officer Richard V. Secord.

While it is possible that President Reagan did not know the full extent of the Iran-Contra Affair, it is clear that he knew that he was violating the embargo against Iran and the Arms Control Export Act when he allowed weapons to be sold to Iran without Congressional approval. Violating the Arms Control Export Act is a criminal offense. Therefore, it is indisputable that President Reagan committed a “high Crime” and should have been impeached.

President George H. W. Bush

There were legitimate questions concerning whether President George H. W. Bush was involved with the Iran-Contra Affair when he was President Reagan’s Vice President. In December of 1992, shortly before leaving office, President Bush pardoned Elliott Abrams, Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers, Clair George, Robert McFarlane, and Caspar Weinberger for their parts in the Iran-Contra Affair. Given the possibility that Bush had been involved in the scandal, this is a clear conflict of interest. He may have pardoning these men in order to hide his own criminal activities while he was Vice President. While President Bush pardoned these individuals on his way out of office, an impeachable offense is an impeachable offense no matter when it occurs. 


President Bill Clinton

President Clinton, as previously discussed, was impeached but acquitted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the Paula Jones case. The Senate was right to acquit Clinton. While perjury and obstruction of justice are crimes, they do not rise to the level of treason or bribery. Given that the crimes were committed in connection with lies about his marital fidelity in a private lawsuit that had nothing to do with his duties as Commander-in-Chief, no true “dereliction of duty” was involved.

However, this does not mean that President Clinton did not commit an impeachable offense during his time in office. On February 28, 1993, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) attempted to execute a search warrant at the compound of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. A fire fight broke out, leading to the deaths of four ATF agents and six members of the Branch Davidian cult. This led to a siege that lasted for fifty days. Ultimately, a fire started in the compound building, killing twenty-six men, women, and children.

The official government story was that members of the Branch Davidian cult started the fires that engulfed the compound building. However, footage reveals that fires began in the areas where FBI combat engineering vehicles (CEVs) broke holes into the building in order to shoot pyrotechnic M651 tear gas grenades inside. Despite the official story, there is a strong possibility that it was the FBI and not the Branch Davidians who caused the deadly fire. It has been revealed that on April 18, 1993, President Clinton explicitly endorsed the tear gas plan.

If it was the FBI and not the Branch Davidians who started the fire, and if President Clinton did give the order to shoot flammable tear gas grenades into the building, then such actions could very well constitute a “high Crime.” President Clinton should have been impeached for this action and not for lying about fellatio.

An even more clear cut case of an impeachable offense committed by President Clinton was his unconstitutional waging of war in the Balkans. President Clinton decided to bomb Yugoslavia without the approval of Congress. According to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, only Congress may declare war. This egregious violation of the Constitution was a clear impeachable offense. The failure of Congress to act set the stage for further impeachable offenses in the adminstrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  

In an important sense, the hubris of Congress for impeaching Clinton over something as inane as lying about marital infidelity in a civil suit unrelated to his duties has made it unlikely that Congress will use its impeachment powers for legitimate reasons in the future.


President George W. Bush

While only two presidents have ever faced impeachment, there was perhaps no president who merited impeachment more than George W. Bush. Bush knowingly dragged the United States into war in Iraq on false pretenses. Bush made 259 false statements about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and 28 false statements about links between Iraq and al Qaeda. Overall, the Bush administration knowingly made nearly 1,000 false statements about Iraq in order to justify military action and “regime change.” Blatantly lying the nation into a war that has cost over 4,000 American lives is clearly an impeachable offense.

Bush also brazenly violated the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment grants the right for people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), warrants for national security wiretaps must be authorized by the secret FISA court. Following 9/11, President Bush initiated a program in violation of FISA that monitored Americans’ international telephone calls and e-mails without FISA warrants. When the nation is in a state of war – especially a war that was initiated on false pretenses – this is no reason to unconstitutionally suspend civil liberties. Knowingly violating the FISA law is grounds for impeachment.


President Barack Obama

President Obama violated the constitution by instituting his “military kinetic action” in Libya. According to the Constitution, only Congress possesses the power to declare war. This did not prevent President Obama from waging war – or rather the Orwellian “kinetic military action” – in Libya in March of 2011. This “kinetic military action” involved launching Tomahawk cruise missiles against the Libyan people. Obama’s actions in Libya violated the War Powers Resolution. According to the War Powers Resolution: “The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” While Qaddafi was a state sponsor of terrorism and no friend to the United States, Libya did not declare war upon the United States. No attack upon the United States was undertaken by Libya. No such attack was imminent.

Under the War Powers Resolution, after sixty days, the President is required to terminate such military action “unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States.” Nevertheless, while Obama sought the approval of NATO, the United Nations, and the Arab League before attacking Libya, he never bothered seeking the approval of Congress at any point. After the sixtieth day of hostilities, Obama claimed that Congressional approval was no longer necessary because American military action had conveniently become “intermittent and principally an effort to support the ongoing NATO-led and UN-authorized civilian support mission and no fly zone.” 

In addition, President Obama brazenly violated Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution by appointing various "czars" without the advice and consent of the Senate. These "czars" wield power akin to cabinet secretaries yet have been appointed by President Obama without confirmation by the Senate. This is a serious violation of the separation of powers and the checks and balances of the Constituion and, as such, constitutes an offense much graver than the alleged offenses for which Johnson and Clinton were impeached.

The Future

Congress has neglected its duty by not using the power of impeachment where it has been clearly warranted in recent decades. If Congress is only going to use the power for political purposes where it is clearly unwarranted while not using it when the president has willfully and seriously violated the Constitution, then Congress has forfeited a power necessary to preserve the separation of powers and the checks and balances inherent in the Constitution. Therefore, it can be expected that future presidents will ignore the Constitution and continue to push the boundaries of their executive power until they become Caesars. 

 

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

The Second Amendment Endangered



“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Second Amendment


If any of the five conservative Justices on the Supreme Court leaves the Court during Obama’s second term, it will spell the end of the Second Amendment as we know it. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court held in a five to four decision that: “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” Rather than summarize the nuanced and well reasoned majority opinion authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, the following will focus upon the dissenting opinion of Justice John Paul Stevens. If a progressive justice was to replace one of the conservative justices on the Court during Obama’s second term, this dissenting opinion will likely become the new interpretation of the Second Amendment.

Stevens states in his dissent that “there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.” Stevens further argues that:

[T]he words “the people” in the Second Amendment refer back to the object announced in the Amendment’s preamble. They remind us that it is the collective action of individuals having a duty to serve in the militia that the text directly protects and, perhaps more importantly, that the ultimate purpose of the Amendment was to protect the States’ share of the divided sovereignty created by the Constitution.

Therefore, Stevens – and the three other progressive Justices who join him in the dissent – view the right to bear arms as a collective right and not an individual right. “When each word in the text is given full effect,” he continues, “the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.” According to Stevens, “Indeed, not a word in the constitutional text even arguably supports the Court’s overwrought and novel description of the Second Amendment as ‘elevat[ing] above all other interests’ ‘the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.’”

A progressive dominated Supreme Court in the near future could very well claim that the existence of standing state National Guards in each of the fifty states eliminates the need for state militias. From this, this hypothetical Supreme Court could hold that the individual right to bear arms may be totally eliminated.

While it is possible to go to great lengths in analyzing the history of gun laws in the United States or in analyzing the legislative history of the Second Amendment, the fact remains that there is no ambiguity in the language of the Second Amendment. Therefore, there is no reason to go beyond the text of the Bill of Rights.

The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In effect, the logical form of the Second Amendment is a material conditional – an “if … then” statement. The material conditional is represented as follows: p -> q.  If p, then q.  So, the Second Amendment may be paraphrased as stating “IF a well regulated Militia is necessary for the security of a free State, THEN the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Let us assume that militias have gone the way of the dodo bird.  Let us assume that the existence of state National Guards under control of state Governors have made state militias unnecessary. Does this mean that the right of the people to keep and bear arms may be infringed? No. Such a conclusion would be fallacious. In fact, this kind of fallacy has been given a name – denying the antecedent. In the material conditional, “p” is known as the antecedent and “q” is known as the consequent.

In order to understand why denying the antecedent is a fallacy, consider a more mundane example. “If it is raining outside, Jane will take an umbrella.” If we assume that it is not raining outside, can we logically conclude that Jane will not take an umbrella? No. Why not? Well, for one thing, Jane may take her umbrella in order to protect herself on a bright and sunny day. Perhaps Jane easily burns in the sun. Perhaps Jane has a fair complexion. Perhaps Jane wishes to avoid skin cancer. Jane may also take her umbrella because she wants to take it to her office and leave it there for days when it begins raining unexpectedly later in the day. Or perhaps Jane is taking the umbrella to her friend’s house. Perhaps the umbrella belongs to her friend and Jane is returning it. Or perhaps Jane has many umbrellas and is giving it to her friend who is in need of an umbrella. In other words, there are many reasons why Jane may take an umbrella with her upon leaving her home that have nothing to do with rain.

Thus, one may not conclude that individuals do not possess the right to keep and bear arms even if there is no longer a need for state militias. If the authors of the Bill of Rights had intended to make the existence of state militias a necessary condition for a right to keep and bear arms, then they would have phrased it differently.

Unfortunately, progressive Supreme Court Justices do not always demonstrate an ability to read, let alone an ability to understand basic logic. Such Justices view the Constitution as a “living document.” In other words, they are willing to pragmatically read into the document any purpose that suits them.

Without an individual right to keep and bear arms, the American Revolution would not have succeeded. Without an individual right to keep and bear arms, there is no way to “dissolve the political bands” that connect the people to an oppressive government. Without an individual right to bear arms, there is no protection for the people against its government. Government will be emboldened to do as it sees fit. Tyranny will prosper.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Anchor Babies Aweigh


A pregnant woman enters the United States illegally and gives birth to her baby within the country. Should this child be granted American citizenship automatically in virtue of being born in the United States? With illegal immigration being such a serious issue at present, the question of "anchor babies" becomes a crucial one.

Leading Republican Senators including Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John McCain and John Kyl of Arizona, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina have challenged birthright citizenship with McConnell stating that he supports holding Congressional hearings on the Fourteenth Amendment right. With the ongoing battle over the Arizona immigration law raging and growing suspicion that President Obama seeks to grant amnesty through executive fiat, the issue of "anchor babies" will surely become more contentious in the coming days. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are 10.8 million illegal aliens living in the United States. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of 2008, there are 3.8 million illegal aliens living in the United States whose children are United States citizens.

As with all federal legal issues, the starting point must be careful examination of the Constitution. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Jeff Sessions has said "I'm not sure exactly what the drafters of the [Fourteenth] amendment had in mind, but I doubt it was that somebody could fly in from Brazil and have a child and fly back home with that child, and that child is forever an American citizen." Senator Sessions' instincts concerning how the analysis of the issue should begin are quite right. But is he right about the intentions of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment?

The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 during the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War. In 1857, the infamous Dred Scot decision held that no black of African descent, even a freed slave, could be a citizen of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment was designed, in part, to prevent states from denying citizenship to freed slaves by validating the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which stated that "All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians and not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States."

The question of what "born or naturalized" in the United States means is clear enough, but to determine the constitutional question concerning "anchor babies," one must determine what "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States means. "Jurisdiction" does not simply mean subject to the laws of the United States. Any person within the United States is subject to the laws of the United States whether a citizen, a visitor, a foreign diplomat, or an illegal alien. Jurisdiction implies allegiance to the United States, and this, of course will not include visitors, foreign diplomats, or illegal aliens. However, this interpretation of "jurisdiction" and of the broader interpretation of citizenship is grounded in the theory of citizenship that one espouses.

The traditional theory of citizenship, grounded in feudalism, is the British view of birthright citizenship. Sir William Blackstone articulated this view clearly in his Commentaries on the Laws of England where he said that natural allegiance "is due from all men born within the king's dominion immediately upon birth," and therefore, such allegiance "is a debt of gratitude which cannot be forfeited, cancelled, or altered, by any change of time, place, or circumstance." The competing theory is the theory of consent citizenship. This view is summarized by Thomas Jefferson in his Summary View of the Rights of British America where he argues in favor of a natural right to leave the country where "chance and not choice" has placed a person. This theory is inherent in the Declaration of Independence as revolution is not possible if one holds an allegiance to the mother country by birth. This view was given concrete form in the Expatriation Act of 1868 which recognized the right of expatriation as "a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." During this period, the birthright theory of citizenship was generally viewed as being incompatible with the principles of republican government.

This was all changed by the Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). Wong Kim Ark was the child of Chinese immigrant parents who were not citizens. He was born in San Francisco sometime between 1868 and 1873. After leaving the United States with his parents to return to China, Wong Kim Ark returned to the United States on his own in 1890 and was granted entry "upon the sole ground that he was a native-born citizen of the United States." However, in 1895 upon returning from a visit to China, he was denied permission to enter the United States. The Collector of Customs who denied him entry argued that Wong Kim Ark, "although born in the city and county of San Francisco, state of California, United States of America, is not, under the laws of the state of California and of the United States, a citizen thereof, the mother and father of the said Wong Kim Ark being Chinese persons, and subjects of the emperor of China, and the said Wong Kim Ark being also a Chinese person and a subject of the Emperor of China." In a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court held that under the Fourteenth Amendment, a child born in the United States of parents of foreign descent who, at the time of the child's birth are subjects of a foreign power but who have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and are carrying on business in the United States, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under a foreign power, and are not members of foreign forces in hostile occupation of United States territory, becomes a citizen of the United States at the time of birth. The Court's rationale was that the Fourteenth Amendment had to be interpreted in light of English common law, and hence, it officially adopted the birthright theory of citizenship. In his dissent, Justice Melville W. Fuller argued that the United States had rejected this view after independence through recognizing the right of expatriation.

The birthright theory of citizenship, although officially accepted by the Supreme Court, is inconsistent with the republican form of government. It is also inconsistent with the very notion of natural rights. In effect, it means that the American Revolution was illegitimate and that the Founding Fathers still owed allegiance to the English Crown despite its tyranny. The birthright theory of citizenship returns all citizens to the state of being serfs who are nothing but the possessions of the ruling powers. While the debate on the issue will no doubt be couched in terms of irrelevant and misleading fringe issues with charges of racism flying freely, the issue is much larger than simply whether a child born in the United States to illegal aliens ought to be made automatically a citizen. The important issue is the status of each American citizen and whether he or she gives allegiance to the government freely through consent or is simply a serf that is owned by his or her lords.

Legal experts widely believe that birthright citizenship can only be changed by amending the Constitution. As always, this should be viewed as the last possible solution, a "nuclear option" as it were. The first line of attack should be seeking to have the erroneous precedent set in United States v. Wong Kim Ark overturned in court. However, as with most things associated with the immigration issue, politicians are unlikely to do anything that might alienate Hispanic voters. As always, our weak willed leaders like McConnell, McCain, Kyl, Sessions, and Graham are likely to want to sound tough on illegal immigration without actually doing anything about it. They will do what is necessary to maximize the number of votes they can win on both sides of the issue.

The theory of birthright citizenship should be rejected for reasons other than the problem of illegal immigration. It is not even a band aid for that wound anyway. It should be rejected to restore the status of autonomous and consenting citizen to each and every American citizen. The problem of illegal immigration will not be solved by turning innocent children into scapegoats. It will only be solved by dismantling the entitlements of the welfare state, by making legal immigration more streamlined, and by severely penalizing the Economic Royalists on the right and left who wish to employ illegal aliens at virtual slave wages in order to save a few dollars while driving down American wages as a result.

Grading Woodrow Wilson



"Like Roosevelt before him, Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. 'No one but the President,' he said, 'seems to be expected ... to look out for the general interests of the country.' He developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world 'safe for democracy.'"

About the Presidents, Whitehouse.gov


The White House website presents the received view on Woodrow Wilson that most of us learned in school. Woodrow Wilson, the story goes, was the professorial leader who looked out for the people of the United States as if they were his flock. He was a brilliant and elite son of a reverend, a man who made the world safe for democracy and attempted so spread American ideals throughout the world with the idealistic zeal of a preacher. Wilson won World War I, the story continues, and gave us the League of Nations in an attempt to ensure that there would never be another Great War. It is Woodrow Wilson that the mainstream Democratic Party seems to most wish to emulate. Barack Obama, with his Harvard law degree and his later experience teaching at Harvard Law School seems to resemble Wilson the academic more than any earlier American president. But is Woodrow Wilson a president that today's American leaders should wish to emulate? In what follows Woodrow Wilson will be evaluated and graded on the categories of foreign affairs, check and balance against legislative power, Supreme Court nominations, and constitutional restraint.

On foreign affairs, Woodrow Wilson's record was that of a warmonger dressed as an academic. Despite posing as a dove and promising the American people that he would keep the republic out of the Great War, he used the "big stick" of American military might whenever and wherever he could. His foreign misadventures made Theodore Roosevelt appear a dove in comparison. The most interventionist president in the history of the republic, Wilson even made George W. Bush seem a man of restraint in comparison.

George Washington, in his Farewell Address in 1796 presciently warned against the United States getting involved in foreign entanglements. Washington asked "Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?" Woodrow Wilson completely ignored this warning despite the fact that avoiding involvement in European politics and European wars had helped make the republic prosperous. Despite winning re-election in 1916 on the slogan "he kept us out of war," Wilson decided by 1915, two years prior to the American entry into the war, that the United States would not allow France and Great Britain to lose the Great War. The Central Powers -- Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria -- posed no threat to the United States. The trench warfare that had become the way the war was fought could not possibly effectively threaten a republic that lay an ocean away. As a result, the American people and the Congress wisely wanted no part of this European war for colonial domination. But Wilson did everything that he could do to draw the United States into this conflict. Despite the warnings of the German government that British merchant vessels carrying armaments were subject to attack, Wilson stated publicly that it was safe for American citizens to travel on such vessels. As warned, German U-boats sank the RMS Lusitania, killing 128 Americans. When even this did not encourage the Congress and the American people that entry into the European war was necessary, Wilson took further steps. Against the will of Congress, he armed U.S. merchant ships and shipped crucial war materials to England and France, despite the avowed neutrality of the republic. Germany had resumed unrestricted U-boat warfare in response, and sank seven of these merchant ships, precipitating the Congress to declare war in April of 1917. Continuing the trend started by McKinley in response to the Maine incident and continued by Franklin Roosevelt with Pearl Harbor, Lyndon Johnson with Gulf of Tonkin, and George W. Bush with 9/11, Woodrow Wilson did not let a crisis go to waste, even one which he had created through his own machinations.

If the new policy of American intervention in European wars and the over 116,000 American lives lost in World War I were not bad enough, Wilson's actions during and immediately following the war planted the seeds for nearly every foreign threat that has faced the republic since the end of World War I, threats which continue to affect the United States to this day. The United States entry into the war had broken what would have ultimately been a stalemate. This prolonging of the war led to the collapse of Russia and to the Bolshevik Revolution. Cold War? Thank Wilson for that. Wilson stood by as the European victors of the war divided up the German colonies and oppressed Germany with the Treaty of Versailles through the "war guilt" clause and through crippling reparations which would quickly destroy the German Weimar Republic and lead to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. World War II? Thank Wilson for that as well. World War I, rather than making the world safe for democracy, made it safe for imperialism. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire precipitated by the American entry into the war, England grabbed up Palestine and much of the rest of the Middle East as colonies. Wilson had championed the idea of "Self Determination" in his ineffectual "Fourteen Points." However, he ended up ignoring this when it came to Palestine, standing by as the British broke their promise to grant Palestinian Arabs independence in exchange for having helped fight against the Ottoman Empire. Instead, England seized Palestine as a colony and later granted part of Palestine to returning Jews, setting in motion the Arab-Israeli conflict which continues to tear up the Middle East to this day and which has ultimately led to three American wars (with more surely to come). Middle East tensions? Thank Wilson for helping to plant that seed as well.

Even with Wilson's machinations behind the scenes, America's entry into World War I was Constitutionally declared by the Congress. However, Wilson also used the American military numerous times in unconstitutional undeclared wars without the backing of Congress, setting a precedent which continues to haunt the republic. Wilson invaded Mexico (a total of eleven times), Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. The vast majority of these unnecessary and unconstitutional invasions were counterproductive, setting the stage for subsequent dictatorships rather than promoting the values of democracy and freedom. These unofficial wars also served no ascertainable national interests, but instead furthered the interests of large corporations. This is best exemplified by the famous quote of celebrated Marine General Smedley Butler: "I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the internal banking house of Brown Brothers .... I brought light to the D.R. for American sugar interests in 1916." 
 
Wilson's imprudent actions leading the republic into an overseas war in which it had no interest set a dangerous precedent involving European entanglements. The war and his actions in its aftermath created scores of problems which continue to haunt the United States to this day. His use of the military to carry out unnecessary and wars in Latin America for the purpose of securing corporate interests set another dangerous and unconstitutional policy. Woodrow Wilson receives a grade of F in the category of foreign affairs.

As president, Woodrow Wilson signed into law numerous unconstitutional pieces of legislation which had the effect of beginning its transformation from a free republic based on Constitutional principles to a Progressive nation that has gradually become something the Founders would not recognize.

On October 3, 1913, the Revenue Act of 1913 was ratified. While not unconstitutional given the imprudent passing of the Sixteenth Amendment, allowing for an income tax, the very act of using this power began the long decline of the United States into the post industrial neo-feudal society that it is nearing. An income tax is itself a form of slavery, as it allows the government to "steal" the fruits of a person's labor at the barrel of a gun. It then redistributes these ill gotten gains from those who earned them to cronies and to citizens whose votes politicians are attempting to "buy." At its inception, the republic raised revenues through land sales, user fees, and tariffs. Such a system was more voluntary and less a form of slavery as while one cannot refuse to work (unless one is already fortunate enough to be independently wealthy), one can avoid paying taxes against one's will for the most part under the earlier system. While the typical libertarian position is to oppose tariffs, the "free trade" that has resulted as income tax (and the Federal Reserve's illegal "inflation tax") has replaced tariffs as the method of raising federal revenue has led to the outsourcing that has de-industrialized the United States.

In December of 1913, Wilson signed into law the single worst piece of legislation in American history, signing the Federal Reserve Act into law and with it giving a private central bank the legal authority to issue legal tender. With one unconstitutional stroke of the pen he sold the entire republic and all of her citizens to a cabal of investment bankers. The economic recessions and depressions which the Federal Reserve has caused along with the destruction of the value of the American dollar which it has caused have put the republic on the brink of economic collapse. The Federal Reserve Act also gave the federal government an insidious method by which it could steal from its citizens in order to fund the welfare/warfare state without the citizens even being fully aware of it.

Wilson also signed into law legislation which began what would become "corporate welfare" to farmers and farm corporations. In 1916 he signed the Federal Farm Loan Act into law, creating regional Farm Loan Banks to serve members of Farm Loan Associations. While the act was meant to give smaller farms the ability to compete with larger ones, it continued and enlarged the dangerous precedent of "corporate welfare," a.k.a. government subsidies. Despite the Court's decision in McCulloch v. Maryland a century earlier, it is patently obvious under the Constitution that Congress does not have the power to charter banks. Another related piece of legislation passed under Wilson was the Smith-Hughes National Vocational Act of 1917, which provided federal funds to train people who were entering into agricultural work. In addition to being another example of corporate welfare to farmers, this act was an illicit use of the Spending Clause as it was not for the general welfare but only for a small group of fledgling farmers. Even worse, it got the federal government into the education business. The federal government's gradual domination of the funding of higher learning has made such education prohibitively expensive and has made more and more Americans into slaves with yokes of educational loans which cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Wilson attempted to increase the grasp of federal regulators over American business by signing legislation which transformed the Commerce Clause into the leviathan of domination over Americans and American business that it has become. The Adamson Act of 1916 established an eight-hour workday and overtime pay for interstate railroad workers. While these railroads did engage in interstate commerce, workers are not commerce and hence are not constitutionally appropriate for regulation under that clause. Furthermore, this bill violated the right of autonomous workers and employers to voluntarily contract. Wilson furthered the efforts of Congress to reach even further beyond the contours that the Founders provided for the Commerce Clause by signing the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916, which prohibited the sale in interstate commerce of goods manufactured by children. While the proponents of the act in Congress pretended that its purpose was for the welfare of children, like most such legislation its purpose was just to eliminate cheaper labor to benefit labor unions. If anything, it hurt children from poor families by preventing the children from having the ability to earn money. It was also violative of the Tenth Amendment by usurping the police power of states. The Supreme Court wisely overturned the act as unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), holding that the Commerce Clause did not give the federal government "authority to control the states in their exercise of the police power over local trade and manufacture."

However, the most dangerous constitutional excesses of Congress that Wilson signed into law were acts that used the war as excuses to give the federal government totalitarian powers, beginning the long and sad American descent into fascism. The Food and Fuel Control Act became law on August 10, 1917 and gave the federal government the totalitarian powers to "Provide Further for the National Security and Defense by Encouraging the Production, Conserving the Supply, and Controlling the Distribution of Food Products and Fuel." It gave the president the vague power over nearly everything involved with "the production manufacture, procurement, storage, distribution, sale, marketing, pledging , financing, and consumption of necessaries which are declared to be affected with a public interest." Wilson used this power to control the prices of agricultural products, a power that can be found nowhere in the Constitution. Luckily, this unconstitutional legislation was gutted at the end of 1920 when Warren Harding was in office, but such wartime measures usually tend to remain in place long after a war has ended.

The Selective Service Act passed on May 18, 1917 made all American males aged 21 to 30 (and later amended to 18 to 30) into slaves of the federal government by requiring them to register for military service and to used at the whim of Wilson in his foreign misadventure in Europe. The Webb-Pomerene Act gave immunity to antitrust laws for companies that combined to operate and export trade that was deemed essential for the war effort. This bill furthered fascism, the partnership between government and business, by allowing corporations to gain monopolistic powers during the war at the expense of rival businesses and at the expense of the American people. However, the most fascistic of bills passed during Wilson's tenure was the Railway Control Act of March 1918. This act nationalized the republic's railroads and gave control of them to a newly created unconstitutional body called the United States Railroad Administration. While ostensibly a legitimate use of the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause, this legislation made all businesses potential targets for the overreach of the federal government during times of war.

Wilson allowed the Congress to gut the freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment, again using the war effort and national security as the excuses. On May 16, 1918, Congress passed a law -- the Sedition Act -- which gave Wilson totalitarian powers to violate the natural right of freedom of speech in ways that made him an even greater totalitarian dictatorial powers than the Kaiser possessed in Germany at the time. This law forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused other to view the American government with contempt. The freedom to criticize the government and its members was one of the most cherished freedoms that were won in the Revolutionary War, but Wilson and the Congress proved that the federal government can be all too willing to disregard natural rights guaranteed in the Constitution with the slightest justification, particularly when national defense could be used as an excuse. What part of "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" did Wilson and Congress not understand? Could the Founders have stated it any more clearly?

Wilson presided over a Congress that unconstitutionally sought fascistic control over business through the Commerce Clause, nationalized railroads, enslaved young American males in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibition against slavery and indentured servitude, and abridged the natural right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. He took no steps to oppose these bills and instead used them as a means to make himself a virtual dictator. For this, Woodrow Wilson receives a grade of F in the category of check and balance against the legislature.

Woodrow Wilson appointed three members to the Supreme Court during his two terms in office -- James Clark McReynolds, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, and John Hessein Clarke.

James Clark McReynolds is most famous for having joined with Pierce Butler, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter to form what was dubbed "the Four Horsemen," a coalition within the Supreme Court which opposed the unconstitutional statist machinations of the New Deal during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. McReynolds served as Attorney General under Woodrow Wilson, earning a reputation as a strong enforcer of antitrust laws. McReynolds was confirmed to the Supreme Court on August 19, 1914. During his nearly three decades on the Court, McReynolds was a champion of natural rights and a critic of federal statism.

McReynolds was a champion of natural rights, writing that the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment included an individual's right "to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, to establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, and generally to enjoy privileges, essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." He authored landmark opinions in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) championing the natural right for parents to rear their children without unconstitutional government interference. Meyer overturned a conviction of a teacher who was convicted under a law forbidding the teaching of the German language to students above the ninth grade. Pierce overturned a law which made it illegal for parents to send their children to any schools other than public schools. McReynolds' Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence cleared the way for the Fourteenth Amendment to become a means by which the Ninth Amendment's recognition of traditional natural rights not enumerated in the Bill of Rights could find a place within Constitutional Law.

During the New Deal, McReynolds and the "Four Horsemen" provided a last bastion against the totalitarian statism of the New Deal. In United States v. Butler (1936) they were instrumental in voiding the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, a monstrous Congressional act which redistributed wealth from farmers to other farmers who would reduce the amount of crops they grew. This heinous use of the Commerce Clause to create an unconstitutional agency to increase the price of crops through a reduction of crops grown during the Great Depression was even more disgusting when it is remembered that many Americans were literally starving at that time. In Carter v. Carter Coal Company (1936), McReynolds and the Four Horsemen struck down legislation that regulated the coal industry, standing against an illicit enlargement of the powers of the Commerce Clause by holding that the clause did not allow for the regulation of industries which are local such as mining. In Morehead v. New York (1936), they struck down a New York minimum wage act for women and children, the purpose of which was an attempt to take an end run around the Constitution in order to exclude women and children from the workplace to prop up the wages of union workers. In Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935) McReynolds and his compatriots also struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act, fascistic legislation which, against antitrust laws, permitted cartels and monopolies in an alleged effort to stimulate economic recovery. The Act also gave the government the power to control wages and prices as if it were a Stalinist central planning committee. In the case, the Court held unanimously that industrial "codes of fair competition" violated the separation of powers as an impermissible delegation of Congressional power to the executive branch. Just as importantly, the Court held that the Commerce Clause could not be used to regulate purely intrastate commerce.

However, McReynolds, though consistently a champion of natural rights and the Constitution, did deviate from that position at times. In Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, he voted with the majority holding that Minnesota's Moratorium Law, which allowed for modification of foreclosure terms in mortgages during the Great Depression was constitutional. This state law was a clear violation of the Contract Clause of the Constitution, which states that "no state shall ... pass any ... law impairing the obligation of contracts." The Constitution must be the law of the land during all times, whether times of prosperity or economic depressions. There will always be crises, and if the Constitution can be ignored during such crises, then it stands for nothing.

Even more egregious was McReynolds' opinion in the landmark Second Amendment case United States v. Miller (1939) in which a law outlawing sawed off shotguns was upheld because there was no evidence that such weapons had a reasonable relationship to a well regulated militia. While perhaps the holding itself was modest, the case came to be interpreted to stand for the proposition that the right to bear arms was a collective rather than individual right. This interpretation stood until the recent Heller and McDonald decisions which have begun to swing the jurisprudential pendulum swinging back in the proper constitutional direction. What precisely is so difficult to understand about "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed?"

Finally, McReynolds was not a champion of Fourth Amendment freedoms against unreasonable search as seizure as evidenced by his voting with the majority in Olmstead v. United States (1928) that the Fourth Amendment did not extend to wiretapping of phone conversations.

Louis Brandeis was confirmed to the Supreme Court on June 1, 1916 after a bitterly contested battle in the Senate. Brandeis became a champion of First Amendment rights as well as the natural right to privacy. On economic freedoms, Brandeis was initially an advocate of Constitutional freedom against the New Deal, publicly opposing Franklin Roosevelt's extortionist threat to pack the court in order to salvage his struggling statist New Deal schemes. However, Brandeis eventually became a statist supporter of the New Deal.

In Gilbert v. Minnesota (1920) Brandeis dissented against the Court's decision to uphold a law prohibiting any interference with military enlistment efforts. He wrote that the statute affected the "rights, privileges, and immunities of one who is a citizen of the United States; and it deprives him of an important part of his liberty ... the statute invades the privacy and freedom of the home. Father and mother may not follow the promptings of religious belief, of conscience, of conviction and teach son or daughter the doctrine of pacifism. If they do, any police officer may summarily arrest them." In Whitney v. California (1927), Brandeis joined with Holmes on a concurring opinion in which he argued forcefully that no speech could be viewed as creating a "clear and present danger" if there is time for discussion. He also argued that mere unpopularity does not make an idea dangerous under the First Amendment.

Brandeis anticipated the Court's later recognition of the natural right to privacy against government surveillance (finally codified in 1967 in Katz v. United States) in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States (1928), where he argued against the holding that the Fourth Amendment prohibition did not extend to wiretaps, Brandeis pointed out that at the time of the Founders, only force and violence were potential methods by which forced confessions could be extracted but that technology had increased such methods. He contended that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were meant to provide protection from all threats to such liberties and not just those imaginable at the time they were written.

However, both Brandeis and McReynolds voted with the majority in the horrific decision in Buck v. Bell (1927), which upheld a eugenicist Virginia law that called for the compulsory sterilization of all mentally retarded persons. Thus, neither justice thought that the right to privacy of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to those less intelligent than they were. A large black mark against both men as well as a cautionary tale of the dangers of eugenics based thinking.

Brandeis initially correctly opposed the machinery of the New Deal, seeing it for the unconstitutional statism that it was. In Louisville v. Radford (1935), he wrote the majority opinion, writing for the unanimous Court that the Frazier-Lemke Act, which prevented banks from foreclosing on their property for five years on farmers, was a violation of the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause in that it took private property without compensation. Brandeis also voted with the unanimous Court in Schechter as described above. However, he voted with the Progressive wing of the Court in favor of upholding nearly every other piece of New Deal legislation, supporting the erosion of economic rights and the creation of the welfare state which has bankrupted the republic in subsequent decades.

John Hessein Clarke was confirmed to the Supreme Court on July 24, 1916. In his brief six years on the Court, Clarke consistently voted in favor of expanding the virulent tentacles of government regulation. In famous dissents in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) and Bailey v. Drexel (1922), he argued that the federal government may, by using the Commerce Clause and the Spending Clause, regulate child labor in the states.

Clarke typically voted with his more liberal colleagues such as Brandeis and Holmes in support of the First Amendment. However, he voted with the majority in Abrams v. United States (1918), contending that during times of war, the freedom of speech may be abridged ever where a "clear and present" danger of violence did not exist. Anyone can champion natural rights during times of calm prosperity. However, a person's true view on the Constitution is best determined during times of crisis. Therefore, here Clarke showed his true colors as a jurist who did not truly believe in the freedom of speech. Clarke's greatest contribution to Constitutional freedom was resigning and making room for the nomination of George Sutherland, who was much more a champion of Constitutional freedoms.

Woodrow Wilson's three Supreme Court nominees represented a wide spectrum of views. McReynolds supported economic natural rights and typically supported natural civil liberties. Brandeis supported the natural right to freedom of speech and privacy but did not support natural economic rights. Clarke was hostile to natural rights of all kinds during his brief tenure on the Court. Based on the legacy that these three justices represent, Wilson receives a grade of C+ in the category of Supreme Court nominations.

Woodrow Wilson said of the Constitution that it "is not a mere lawyer's document: it is a vehicle of life and its spirit is always the spirit of the age." In other words, Wilson viewed the Constitution not as a concrete standard but as a nebulous rule of thumb to be interpreted relativistically. Wilson consistently ignored the Constitution where it suited his purposes and twisted it where it suited his purposes.

Wilson showed no Constitutional restraint where use of the military was involved, abusing his powers as Commander in Chief and carrying out corporatist wars in Latin America without Congressional declaration of war. Only Congress has the power to declare war under Article I of the Constitution. The Prize Cases (1863) gave the president the power to immediately use military force to resist invasion by a foreign nation, however no such immediate threat emanated from the Latin American countries that he so often invaded during his regime.

Wilson also overstepped his Constitutional bounds by setting up a propaganda arm of the executive branch, the Committee on Public Information. This propaganda machine, which was purportedly used as inspiration by Nazi Joseph Goebbels, used propaganda and disinformation to stoke support of the American citizenry for World War I. Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that the president has the power to use such propaganda against the people. Furthermore, such propaganda is not necessary for the president to use the powers of Commander in Chief. Given that it is Congress, who are elected by the people, which has the power to declare war, it is of the utmost importance that the people have access to the truth concerning war rather than being exposed to Big Brother style propaganda. Just as the president does not have the Constitutional power to declare war against foreign powers, he also does not have the power to declare a psychological "information war" against the people of the republic by dubbing the Germans "evil Huns" when in fact Germans at the time possessed more rights than Wilson's English allies and the German Kaiser possessed less dictatorial power than Wilson himself had unconstitutionally grabbed.

Wilson used the unconstitutional Sedition Act of 1918 and Espionage Act to crack down on natural rights at every turn, turning the republic into a police state against which even the Patriot Act police state of George W. Bush and Barack Obama pales. He arrested and convicted thousands of socialists for opposing World War I. He used the Post Office to censor telephone and telegram traffic. In a turn of events that shocks, Wilson had filmmaker Robert Goldstein thrown in prison for making the patriotic silent film The Spirit of '76, a silent film which had the audacity to show Wilson's World War I British allies in an unflattering light. While the British atrocities depicted in the film were most certainly fanciful, Wilson created a climate in which no cherished freedom of speech was safe.

Two years after the end of World War I, Wilson vetoed an attempt by Congress to repeal the Sedition and Espionage Acts. Even if such laws were constitutionally justified by war, continuing such a statist power grab after the cessation of hostilities is clearly an extreme overstepping of constitutional bounds.

Wilson was a vehement racist, and used this motivation to violate the Constitution. Upon taking office he fired most blacks within the federal government. He also re-segregated the navy, allowed his cabinet to attempt to impose strict segregation in federal administrative agencies, supported Jim Crow Laws and the Ku Klux Klan, and attempted to coax Congress to pass legislation to restrict the civil liberties of blacks. Thus, Wilson did not show the Constitutional restraint to obey the Thirteenth Amendment, which was interpreted in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) to apply to "the badges and incidents of slavery," which Wilson's aforementioned actions invoked.

Wilson was also a misogynist, having female suffragettes arrested on dubious pretenses. Yet paradoxically, he supposedly allowed his wife to make executive decisions during the period that he was infirm following a stroke. If this is at all true and not just an apocryphal tale, then it is yet another egregious violation of the Constitution in letting an unelected person perform such functions.

Wilson did not demonstrate one iota of restraint in overstepping the bounds of the Constitution. Therefore, in the category of constitutional restraint, Woodrow Wilson receives a grade of F.

Woodrow Wilson's eight years in office marked a period of needless war, unconstitutional unofficial "wars," unconstitutional legislation which he did not oppose, unconstitutional violations of civil liberties, and most alarmingly, the creation of the Federal Reserve, which has been the most virulent disease that the United States has ever faced, destroying the value of its currency, impoverishing its citizens, and creating economic busts which threaten to cause total collapse. He receives grades of F on foreign policy, check and balance against the legislature, and constitutional restraint. He receives a grade of C+ in the category of Supreme Court nominations. However, even the contributions that McReynolds made to the defense of economic freedoms and the contributions that Brandeis made to the defense of the First Amendment cannot erase how bad a president Woodrow Wilson was. He was the worst American president.