Haskell County Board of Commissioners
E Main Street
County Courthouse
Stigler, OK 74462-2439
Phone: (918) 967-4352
Fax: (918)967-3290

Dear Board of Commissioners,

It was with saddened hearts that we learned of the recent ruling of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals declaring that the display of the Ten Commandments was an unconstitutional “endorsement of religion.” However, we were greatly encouraged by the statement of Commissioner Mitch Worsham indicating it was your intention not to obey or to take the monument down. We write to strengthen and confirm you in that resolve.

It has been the sovereign right of the People of the several States to acknowledge God in our public places since before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. All of our nation’s organic documents acknowledge Christ and God. This is historically true. The Tenth Amendment reserves to the States and to their peoples all powers not given to the federal government nor prohibited by the Constitution to them. The First Amendment prohibition against an Establishment of Religion applies by its express terms only to Congress. The usurpation of reserved States Rights by liberal, activist judges cannot override the written Constitution nor can it obviate our duty before the Majesty in Heaven. We must obey God more than men. We implore you not to yield to spiritual wickedness in high places by surrendering your ground.

Oklahoma recently passed a Tenth Amendment Resolution claiming sovereignty under the U.S. Constitution. To date, 34 States have followed or are following Oklahoma’s example in telling the federal government to cease and desist it unlawful intrusion into and usurpation of reserved States’ Rights. To bring this matter to an immediate Constitutional confrontation and crisis, we encourage you to petition the Oklahoma Legislature to enact legislation making it unlawful for any officer of the State or any of its subdivisions to obey a federal court judgment purporting to invade reserved States’ Right by ordering the removal of any monument displaying the Ten Commandments, the Cross of Christ, or other acknowledgement of God as the Supreme Majesty in Heaven, who alone is the author of our being, the guardian of our liberties, and the wellspring of our happiness.

God bless you as you endeavor to persist in your moral courage and resolution to resist the unlawful acts of a usurping federal judiciary. Better that Oklahoma secede from the Union than to abandon its duty to its citizens and to God.

Sincerely,

Patrick Henry Lives

As the article below shows, a usurping federal judicary just declared that the State cannot acknowledge God. It cannot display the Ten Commandments because that is "endorsing religion." The State can endorse atheism and evolution, however. Indeed, atheism is the official religion of the federal power. Here is what the logical result becomes:

Constitutional Model:

God: author of our lives/being
God: author of our rights
God: author of our liberties

Usurping Judiciary Model:

Evolution: author of life/being
???: author of rights
???: author of liberty

It is clear from this model that where the State cannot acknowledge God as the author of man's rights and liberties, the only remaining source for these can only be the State, or, in this case, the federal government.

Thus, the atheistic federal judiciary model not only usurps reserved States' Rights (which are the People's rights), it arrogates to itself the very seat and throne of Almighty God! Indeed, their whole line of conduct shows that they see themselves as gods, who give us this right and take away another as their whim and caprice today blows this way, tomorrow that.

This is why the issue of the People's right that the State acknowldge God is so fundamental to our whole Constitutional system and why we cannot, must not yeild ONE INCH in this regard. We CANNOT, DARE NOT, WILL NOT OBEY. And we ought to be willing to secede and give our life blood if need require defending the right to secede before we give in and obey. For the very minute we give this one right away (the right of the People for the State to acknowledge God), then we give ALL OUR RIGHTS AWAY adn become slaves under a government that acknowledges no power or authority greater than itself.

DENVER, CO - A federal appeals court has ruled that a Ten Commandments monument outside Oklahoma’s Haskell County Courthouse “has the primary effect of endorsing religion.”

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to federal Judge Ronald White so he could issue a new ruling consistent with theirs. White previously rejected arguments that the monument promotes Christianity at the expense of other religions.

The latest ruling prompted Haskell County Commissioner Mitch Worsham to say, “Whoever was the judge in this, I feel sorry for him on Judgment Day.”

Haskell County’s attorneys can now ask all the judges on the appellate court to review the panel’s decision, or appeal the case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Worsham says, “We’re not going to take it down.”

Thanks Jeff. You wrote:

Changing the way Senators are elected is often criticized. Why 3/4’s of stastes agreed to that, I am not sure.

Y'know, that one has always baffled me too. I really just don't get it. Unless the people at that point had somehow become dyed-in-the-wool true believing Jacobin democrats intent on destroying their republican form of government. I don't think so, but anyway...

You wrote:

I see none of them particularly momumental, except the income tax and the failure to put limits on how much revenue the feds could raise.

I completely agree with that assessment. Rarely do you have a singlular example of change that is particularly monumental in its causes or effects. At least in its initial phases. Taken as a whole, however, well, you know where I'm going. And the whole, as has been said before, is exactly equal to the sum of its parts.

Good discussion.

The arrogance of the federal judiciary galls me. To think they have the audacity to impose their will upon a whole nation without one word of legal justification - to dare rewrite the Constitution merely to accomodate their own social agenda - is nothing less than breath taking. They are criminal usurpers and ought to be shut up in federal prison for their complete disregard for the rule of law.

Thanks for the update, PHL.

Off topic, but speaking of the scoundrels sitting on the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, they've had the teeth of our (Oklahoma's) Immigration law, H.B. 1804, suspended since June of 2008 on the basis that the provisions under suspension probably violate federal immigration law, which is b.s. and the court knows it. The provisions were to go into effect in July of the same year.

Thanks, Terry! I improved it before mailing it off. I added language about the legislature making legislative findings and declaration of fact as to the original intent of the 1st and 14th amendments, and that no decision of any court in contravention of the original intent of our national compact or any amendment thereto can bind or otherwise diminish the right of the People and State of Oklahoma under the 10th Amendment. And on that basis, that the Oklahoma Legislature enact legislation making it illegal, not only for a state officer to enforce, but for any person or federal agent to attempt to compel enforcement of a court order purporting to require removal of a monument, etc.

The idea is, that 1) by backing a law with legislative findings and declarations of fact as to the original intent of the 1st and 14th Amendments, the State completely cuts the legs out from under the doctrine of "selective incorporation" and announces that it cannot and will not be bound judicial activism that contravenes the intent with which a law/amendment was enacted, 2) it binds federal agents and other persons (lawyers, plaintiffs, federal marshals, etc) and makes criminal any attempt to enforce an order violating reserved states' rights regarding an establishment of religion. I sent a copy to Representative Charles Key, author of Oklahoma's 10th Amendment Resolution, and to Judge Roy Moore, the famous 10 Commandments Judge, in Alabama. If followed up on, it would create an immediate constitutional confrontation: judical activism vs. original intent and State Sovereignty!

I'll post the other version later when I get home from work.

Patrick Henry Lives,

Excellent letter. Thanks for posting it.

I've added it to my blog entry on the subject "On the destruction of local self-government/"the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states"", with attribution, of course. Here. Hope you don't mind.

Haskell County Board of Commissioners
E Main Street
County Courthouse
Stigler, OK 74462-2439
Phone: (918) 967-4352
Fax: (918)967-3290

Dear Board of Commissioners,

It was with saddened hearts that we learned of the recent ruling of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals declaring that the display of the Ten Commandments was an unconstitutional “endorsement of religion.” However, we were greatly encouraged by the statement of Commissioner Mitch Worsham indicating it was your intention not to obey or to take the monument down. We write to strengthen and confirm you in that resolve.

It has been the sovereign right of the People of the several States to acknowledge God in our public places since before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. All of our nation’s organic documents acknowledge Christ and God. This is historically true. The Tenth Amendment reserves to the States and to their peoples all powers not given to the federal government nor prohibited by the Constitution to them. The First Amendment prohibition against an Establishment of Religion applies by its express terms only to Congress. The usurpation of reserved States Rights by liberal, activist judges cannot override the written Constitution nor can it obviate our duty before the Majesty in Heaven. We must obey God more than men. We implore you not to yield to spiritual wickedness in high places by surrendering your ground.

Oklahoma recently passed a Tenth Amendment Resolution claiming sovereignty under the U.S. Constitution. To date, 34 States have followed or are following Oklahoma’s example in telling the federal government to cease and desist it unlawful intrusion into and usurpation of reserved States’ Rights. To bring this matter to an immediate Constitutional confrontation and crisis, we encourage you to petition the Oklahoma Legislature to enact legislation making it unlawful for any officer of the State or any of its subdivisions to obey a federal court judgment purporting to invade reserved States’ Right by ordering the removal of any monument displaying the Ten Commandments, the Cross of Christ, or other acknowledgement of God as the Supreme Majesty in Heaven, who alone is the author of our being, the guardian of our liberties, and the wellspring of our happiness.

God bless you as you endeavor to persist in your moral courage and resolution to resist the unlawful acts of a usurping federal judiciary. Better that Oklahoma secede from the Union than to abandon its duty to its citizens and to God.

Sincerely,

Patrick Henry Lives

Here is the mailing address and names of the Haskell County Commissioners. I recomend taking a few moments and writing the Board to urge them not to obey the federal court. I am going to refer them to this site and to suggest they ask the State to pass legislation declaring it Oklahoma's inherent, sovereign and historical right to ackknowledge God. I would encourage getting others to do the same.

202 E Main Street
County Courthouse
Stigler, OK 74462-2439
Phone: (918) 967-4352
Fax: (918)967-3290

Kenneth Short Jr. Commissioner, District 1
Paul Storie Commissioner
Mitch Worsham Commissioner, District 2
Bryan Hale Sheriff
Gail Dixon Treasurer
Roger Ballard Assessor
Gail Brown County Clerk

Patrick Henry Lives,

We agree. But as I indicated in a comment under another entry at this site recently, people tend to come along at their own pace. We see in the O.T. stories concerning the Israelites the very nature ... of human nature, at the risk of coining a repetitive phrase. But it's true, isn't it? When things were going good for the Israelites, they forgot about their God. When they became desperate, they cried out to him for relief. And as the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts assured its constituents in a proclamation issued just four days prior to the "shot heard 'round the world,":

It is the happiness of his Church that, when the Powers of Earth and hell combine against it, and those who should be Nursing Fathers become its Persecutors--then the Throne of Grace is of easiest access--and its appeal thither is graciously invited by the Father of Mercies, who has assured it, that when his Children ask Bread he will not give them a Stone.

If history is any indication, I imagine we're going to see, in the relatively near future, people rediscovering their roots, re-asserting their manhood, and resisting the tyrannous practices of a completely out-of-control central government and the ideology currently controlling it. The lines will be drawn, and the real men will step forward as a matter of principle and duty. That, in a nutshell, is what I see coming.

Take heart, brother!

Also, J. Henry Jr., just to be clear:

The John Galt Option is one of many ways in which individuals can make a significant difference, as I intimated in the comment you were referring to. And it needn't be an all-out (no pun intended) non-participation. It can be partial (and legal and moral as well) and still effective. There are all kinds of federal taxes imposed on all kinds of goods and services that the average person doesn't even think about most of the time. The great majority of which are non-essential to ones ultimate survival. The "dependent masses" aren't paying any taxes anyway, by and large, so it's up to those who are to start "opting out."

TM: If the bought and paid for masses have no interest in secession, then how can it possibly be accomplished?

Your question draws from the assumption that the bought-and-paid-for masses are equally distributed among the various states, which is far from the case. This is evidenced merely by the fact that the states themselves are more or less serious about their assertion of their tenth amendment priveleges depending on which state you're talking about, just to offer an example of a very recent phenomenon, but also among other issues equally revealing. As far as Oklahoma is concerned, as an example, and as I've said before, when you get down to where the rubber meets the road (we're not quite there yet, but anyway), you're probably looking at something along the lines of a 65-35, 60-40 split in favor of state sovereignty. When I said above that my belief at this point is that the United States is virtually unreformable based on the numbers of irreformable dependent citizens we have, I meant the United States taken as a whole, not in its constituent parts. The numbers, of course, vary from state to state, region to region. Which is also the reason that secession, when it occurs (and it will occur), will likely reveal a regional split in attitudes.

But like I said, we're not quite there yet. Give it some time.

Hi Terry,

I think the ultimate issue facing us today is whether we have men of sufficient moral conviction, courage, and resolution to do anything about what is happening. I fear that soft living in the land of plenty has blunted our moral consciences so that principle, right vs. wrong, honor, honesty, piety, self-sacrifice for what we beleive are largely missing from the landscape. Why does it take an economic crisis for the States to finally rouse themselves and start passing 10th Amendment Resolutions? Is the thing that matters most money? Doesn't God come first, and what about our children being victimized by a school system that is overtly hostile to Christianity? Why do so few care? Millions attend church from week to week, yet they seem oblivious to what is happening around them. I have to conclude that the quality of religion in America is very, very low. Otherwise, they would not sit still but would rise up.

I have always felt that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's forced removal from the bench should have sparked outrage and State secession across the Bible belt. Yet, it was a total cave in. I think only Mississipppi said anything that was supportive or defiant of federal authority. I worry that we have been reduced to a nation of moral eunuchs, castrates, and neuters that the will to resist is now non-existent. I hope I am wrong.

TM: If the bought and paid for masses have no interest in secession, then how can it possibly be accomplished? We are on the cusp of massive state bailouts by a money printing federal government, which will further erode states rights.

If 60 percent of the citizenry can vote themselves "raises" each election then the only way to move them out of the way is to turn off the spigot. It needs to be physically impossible for raises to be granted.

While the John Galt Option makes for interesting conversation, it is hardly a realistic strategy to pursue, at least today. I could easily "shrug" for a year or more and I am certainly willing to do so, but I fear I am merely one of a very tiny minority that is both able and willing. It may be theoretically possible, but it is unlikely that even a majority of sincere pledges would stay the course until the objective was reached.

I do spend a significant amount of my time mentally wrestling with the problem of a corrupt central government and its purchasing of the vote and I have yet to come up with a viable strategy to combat it in the short term. The globalists and progressives have built a formidable machine over the past century plus. They have successfully taken over the institutions of education, mass media and entertainment. They have virtual ownership of
those who choose not to pay attention to what is actually going on in government. I believe that at least 30 percent of those people would vote the other way if they really understood what they were voting for. While it may not be a short term solution, voter education is a battle worth waging.

The progressives are "remaking" our country and both fortunately and unfortunately they will destroy it in the process. "Fortunately" because while slow to awaken, we are nothing less than a juggernaut when roused from our slumber. The vast majority of both the republicans and democrats have forsaken their responsibilities to their constituents. It is a time for true independents, beholden to nobody save for the citizens who would vote for them, to seize the day. Better than 40 percent responding to some polls self-identify as independents. Our country is in dire straits and it will surely be much darker before dawn threatens. We need to coordinate an effort to retake our country based upon Liberty. A great part of that effort should be the re-assertion of states' rights and the de-centralization of government, they way the founding fathers envisioned.

I'm all for anything that will re-empower states and municipalities, what we are experiencing now is simply horrifying.

Patrick Henry Lives,

The town in question is only a hop, skip and a jump, in a manner of speaking, from my home.

Obviously the central government considers government at the smallest, most local level to be nothing more or less ultimately than its agent. This is the reason I rail so hard about the creation of a (constitutionally recognized) dual citizenship in America, because irregardless of the good intentions of the framers of the fourteenth amendment, the evil that it is used for far outweighs, in my opinion, any good that has been derived therefrom. And we certainly get little relief from our illustrious lawmakers who have the constitutional power to tell the courts to take a proverbial hike in such matters.

Ultimately you're right. If the relatively insignificant county of Haskell is no more or less than an agent of the tyrannous national government (by the government's reckoning), and all that that implies by extension to every other county and municipality in the country, and if we stand to get no relief in these matters from our spineless representatives in federal Congress, then secession is the only option left us.

As the article below shows, a usurping federal judicary just declared that the State cannot acknowledge God. It cannot display the Ten Commandments because that is "endorsing religion." The State can endorse atheism and evolution, however. Indeed, atheism is the official religion of the federal power. Here is what the logical result becomes:

Constitutional Model:

God: author of our lives/being
God: author of our rights
God: author of our liberties

Usurping Judiciary Model:

Evolution: author of life/being
???: author of rights
???: author of liberty

It is clear from this model that where the State cannot acknowledge God as the author of man's rights and liberties, the only remaining source for these can only be the State, or, in this case, the federal government.

Thus, the atheistic federal judiciary model not only usurps reserved States' Rights (which are the People's rights), it arrogates to itself the very seat and throne of Almighty God! Indeed, their whole line of conduct shows that they see themselves as gods, who give us this right and take away another as their whim and caprice today blows this way, tomorrow that.

This is why the issue of the People's right that the State acknowldge God is so fundamental to our whole Constitutional system and why we cannot, must not yeild ONE INCH in this regard. We CANNOT, DARE NOT, WILL NOT OBEY. And we ought to be willing to secede and give our life blood if need require defending the right to secede before we give in and obey. For the very minute we give this one right away (the right of the People for the State to acknowledge God), then we give ALL OUR RIGHTS AWAY adn become slaves under a government that acknowledges no power or authority greater than itself.

DENVER, CO - A federal appeals court has ruled that a Ten Commandments monument outside Oklahoma’s Haskell County Courthouse “has the primary effect of endorsing religion.”

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to federal Judge Ronald White so he could issue a new ruling consistent with theirs. White previously rejected arguments that the monument promotes Christianity at the expense of other religions.

The latest ruling prompted Haskell County Commissioner Mitch Worsham to say, “Whoever was the judge in this, I feel sorry for him on Judgment Day.”

Haskell County’s attorneys can now ask all the judges on the appellate court to review the panel’s decision, or appeal the case directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Worsham says, “We’re not going to take it down.”

Terry, I agree with your assessment. The rich like it this way because they can retain their wealth and have the US burden substantially carried on the backs of the middle class. By middle class, I do not use Obama's definition, but instead, refer to those who basically have non-dynastic wealth. In other words, those with dynastic wealth must be quite content.

Then, you have the poor. They want to expand the programs that benefit them. The dynatically rich don't really care (see, e.g. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates).

So, it falls on the middle class. Yet, the programs tend to erode the middle class by taking away incentive and leading them to migrate a little more toward poverty, where their vote has nothing to do with incentive and growth of the individual.

So, with an increasingly insufficient middle class, we will not have the influence it will take to ever really get back.

So, count up the elderly, the poor, the kids and the very rich, and what percentage of our population they represent. The rest is the middle class who has enough of a stake in taxation to see its negatives.

I realize that this is going to sound a bit radical and fatalistic to some, but I've personally moved past the point of believing that the United States can be restored to any semblance of the legitimate constitutional republic that it once was (though I still hold out hope, and am behind any proposal that would work in that direction). The main reason I've come to this conclusion is that upwards of 50% of our citizenry is non-self-governing (i.e., dependent on government), and they have no intent of (ever) being self-governing, by coercion or otherwise. Clamoring for the elimination of self-destructive policies, economic and otherwise, really only serve to alarm the dependent classes among us and to strengthen their resolve to resist such movements with every fiber of their insignificant beings. But I do think that there are real, concrete ways for productive individuals to make a positive difference. Taking the John Galt option is one of them, but it requires a great deal of personal sacrifice; sacrifices that I'm not sure that a significant number of people are yet willing to make.

Thanks Jeff. You wrote:

Changing the way Senators are elected is often criticized. Why 3/4’s of stastes agreed to that, I am not sure.

Y'know, that one has always baffled me too. I really just don't get it. Unless the people at that point had somehow become dyed-in-the-wool true believing Jacobin democrats intent on destroying their republican form of government. I don't think so, but anyway...

You wrote:

I see none of them particularly momumental, except the income tax and the failure to put limits on how much revenue the feds could raise.

I completely agree with that assessment. Rarely do you have a singlular example of change that is particularly monumental in its causes or effects. At least in its initial phases. Taken as a whole, however, well, you know where I'm going. And the whole, as has been said before, is exactly equal to the sum of its parts.

Good discussion.

Terry makes a very good point. Many are rather obvious, though. Free the slaves. Don't drink beer. Okay, drink beer. Let women vote.

Changing the way Senators are elected is often criticized. Why 3/4's of stastes agreed to that, I am not sure.

The 16th was a horrible mistake, which occurred in times when the fed needed money. The states might have thought they'd be better off not being blamed for new taxes if they could point the finger at federal gov't. Just a guess.

I see none of them particularly momumental, except the income tax and the failure to put limits on how much revenue the feds could raise.

Limiting federal revenues alone could easily lead to vast improvement in state's rights. Without all the money, the extra power could not have been sought or sustained.

Well, that would certainly be a good start. But if we don't attempt to understand some of the fundamental changes and alterations that initiated this whole degenerative process, then we're just going through the motions for the sake of going through the motions anyway.

There are a total of 27 amendments added to the U.S. Constitution. If we remove the Bill of Rights from consideration, then that leaves us with 17. Seven of which incorporate some version of the following phrase: "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." I.e., a new power granted to the federal Congress. I.e., a power taken from the States, and/or the People.

When we take a close look at these amendments, we see that each involves either a fundamental change to our original form of government, or a logical next step per that fundamental change. People wonder why our government no longer operates efficiently, etc., etc., etc.? I'll tell you why: Because we somehow think we're more enlightened than were our founding fathers, thus we presume to undo what took generations and generations of forethought to achieve. No; they weren't perfect, nor was any work of their hands, including the U.S. Constitution, perfect. But the original constitution they created is probably the closest thing to perfection that we can ever hope to get. Any alteration that is made to it ought to be very very carefully and solemnly considered. I must say that this has not been the case.

Two legitimate sources of power, as the article correctly states: Creator and the people.

Nothing more, nothing less. Good stuff.