"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it." -- Patrick Henry in 1775

If nothing else, we have to give them credit for making noise and getting noticed. Sure, for those of us who follow politics, it was more comedy than seriousness. But, that's not the point. Unlike conservatives, the far left made big news and had a little fun.

Watching the anti-American & anti-war protests of last weekend was very instructive when you know the players. About 5% were mainline socialist/communist organizers. Nearly 20% had no reason for being there other than to try to get lucky. Another 20% were has-been hippies who just do not fit in anywhere anymore. At least another 20% had issues other than protesting a war that may or may not happen. And it looked like the rest were just there because someone made them think it might be a good idea. It was something to do, in other words. A party.

Washington Times Editor in Chief Wesley Pruden pegged the leaders accurately in his column last Tuesday: "The organizers pretended, like many of the young people, to be something called 'peace activists'. But anyone who remembers the demos of the '60s, when the crowds actually did number in the hundreds of thousands, recognized the organizers for who they really are, a collection of Karl Marxists (now mostly stumbling into their eighth and ninth decades), Groucho Marxists (who nurture the conceit that most Americans are like themselves and thus see America as worthy only of contempt), and assorted panhandlers, grifters and beggars with a gift for haranguing the gullible."

Fact is, this time the socialist/communist organizers admitted their complicity on web sites. They coordinated some of the actions through the Progressive Challenge (1), which is a kissing cousin of Social Democrats, USA (2) and Socialist International. This time around, Progressive Challenge tried to hide their actions from an inquiring public by not linking to it on their main page. But, the information is there, on their web site. (3)

Yet another kissing cousin of the socialist Progressive Challenge is the Congressional Progressive Caucus. (4) Card carrying members of the socialist Congressional Progressive Caucus, Cynthia McKinney, Reps. Charley Rangel (D-NY) and John Conyers (D-MI) were there, as were the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

David Horowitz identified some of the organizers in Front Page (5): "America's enemies within turned out in force on Saturday in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco under the auspices of the Communist Workers World Party operating under its front organization, A.N.S.W.E.R. (6) Once again the demonstrators pretended to be peace activists, who found violence abhorrent and a willing media played along with the charade. Neither the New York Times nor the Los Angeles Times, nor any media I saw, identified the organizers as Communists who have a long record of support for world terror and its leaders, including the Ayatollah Khomeini, Kim Jong Il, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

"As reported by the unfiltered cameras of C-SPAN, the pretense, in fact, was pretty thin. One of the featured speakers was a spokesman for the narco-terrorists in Colombia."

Brent Baker described some of the sympathetic liberal media coverage for Media Research (7):

"Though Saturday's anti-war with Iraq 'peace' march in Washington, D.C., was organized by a far-left group, had a bunch of zany leftist outfits as sponsors, featured some far-out rhetoric from the stage which belied the notion that the organizers simply want a peaceful solution, and ended with a march to the Washington Navy Yard to demand access to U.S. 'weapons of mass destruction,' as if the U.S. and Iraqi possession of them is equivalent, major media outlets, both print and broadcast, ignored such realities which might have reduced empathy for the cause.

"Instead, the networks painted participants as sympathetically as possible, trying to make them identifiable to viewers as people next door, stressing how they were made up of 'grandparents,' 'honor students,' 'teachers,' 'businessmen,' 'military veterans,' 'soccer moms' and 'Republicans.' Plus, CNN really turned on the syrup by focusing on an elderly [Holocaust] survivor who caught 'a ride with a busload of young people, all to stop another war, to stop more suffering,'"

So there you have it, from somewhat different viewpoints. The far left socialists and communists held a protest and a few useful idiots showed up to party -- for whatever reasons. And, as happened way back in another era, the liberals in the American media helped them out by not even mentioning the trash responsible for coordinating the protests.

1. <http://www.ips-dc.org/netprogress/>

2.<http://www.socialdemocrats.org/>

3. <http://www.ips-dc.org/citiesforpeace/>

4. <http://bernie.house.gov/pc/>

5. <http://www.FrontPageMagazine.com>

6. <http://pax.protest.net/>

7.<http://www.mediaresearch.org>

Along with political chameleon Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrats considering running for president in 2004 are Rep. Dick Gephardt, Sen. John Kerry, Sen. John Edwards, and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. All of them, collectively, wouldn't make a good executive.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle was also thinking about running but dropped out. Reason? Daschle's overpaid wife lobbies the house, yet it is just amazing how many of her proposed bills he has quietly inserted into Senate bills over the years. That's sort of illegal, of course.

Anyway, none of them have anything resembling a personality and would never stand out above the noise on the campaign trail. But, now along comes Rev. Al Sharpton. Rev. Al has plenty of personality and will be great fun to watch in the debates.

Already Reverend Al is trying to cut himself special deals among the other candidates. Rev. Al says he'll shut up about all the corruption, scandals and skeletons in the various Democratic closets he knows about if no one mentions all the ethical questions in his past. "The next time anybody wants to know about Tawana Brawley, I'm going to ask them, 'Do you ask Teddy Kennedy about Chappaquiddick? Do you ask Hillary Clinton about her husband?'" Sharpton warned Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin.

The guy has a point there!

Alarmingly, it appears Hillary is being primed for vice president. She must have quite a lot on Tom Daschle. First, he gave her a leadership position on the Senate Democratic Steering and Coordination Committee, a taxpayer-funded political propaganda committee. That makes Hillary the Senate Dem's propaganda czar. Then, this expressed hater of the American military wins a coveted seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Can she even pass a security check?

Something is definitely wrong with this picture! There is no way Hillary should be trusted with the information she will receive as a member of the Armed Services Committee. Evidently, there is a whole lot more to this story than anyone is reporting.

When Daschle unexpectedly decided not to run for president in 2004, he said he preferred to "fight the fights" against Bush and Republicans from the Senate floor. Problem is, that is what he hired Hillary for. She's the owner of all those FBI files.

Over on the House side, the new House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), demonstrated her total disregard for American law yet again. This time, she ordered that the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco, housing her local office, is to become the first federal facility to accept Mexican-issued ID cards -- used by illegal immigrants as valid identification while squatting here.

These ID cards are a major scam on the American people. Despite concerns by U.S. law enforcement honchos and immigration officials, the Mexican government is passing the identity cards out by the thousands to Mexican illegals in this country. These "matricular consular cards" cost about $25, run for five years and can be obtained from many Mexican consular offices with just a birth certificate and a photo identification issued in either Mexico or the United States. No legal resident needs one. Yet, the Mexican government wants them accepted for all services in the United States. Pelosi is working towards that end.

On another important matter: Congress gave the grandmothers and grandfathers of the nation living on Social Security an average cost of living increase of about ten bucks a month this year. But, they gave themselves a $4,700 annual cost of living increase. Fact is, since 1990, Congress has given themselves a whopping $18,000 in pay raises -- more than the total amount anyone on Social Security gets.

So, there you have the class hierarchy in our government. Congress gets a $4,700 annual cost of living raise. Federal employees will receive a 4.1% increase. Great-grandma, on Social Security, received but a paltry 1.2% increase. Apparently, the cost of living must be a lot more for those employed by the government.

Memo to Capitol Hill: People are noticing!

Now comes a Meals for Deals program. The House just voted to increase the amount of graft they can receive from lobbyists and others. New changes would allow groups like charities (read political non-profits!) to give lawmakers free travel and lodging at resorts and make it easier for lobbyists to send complimentary food to congressional offices.

Strange place, that Washington, D.C. Even the so called conservatives are becoming like liberals with their grubby hands out looking for more free goodies in trade for votes.

Over the years, I have written a lot on the subject of "Boxing Liberty." Heck, I'm on my "soap box" nearly every week and often write about the ballot box and the cartridge box. Few, however, including me, ever write about our responsibility in the jury box.

Let's forget, for a moment, what today's over-zealous and omnipotent judges, prosecutors and lawyers tell us. Instead, let's take a look back at how our law was intended to be administrated and what the roll the citizen was intended to play.

In The Federalist Papers No. 62, James Madison admonishes: "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?"

So, what is our recourse, then? How may a citizen help to correct the harm done by a stupid law? John Adams answered that back in 1771: "It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court."

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a 1789 letter to Thomas Paine: "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

John Jay, our nation's first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered in Georgia v. Brailsford: "The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."

Samuel Chase, Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Declaration of Independence wrote in 1804: "The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts."

Like all the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton agreed. In 1804, Hamilton wrote: "Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction . . . if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong."

Lysander Spooner, the Nineteenth-Century lawyer, abolitionist, entrepreneur, legal theorist and all around political radical, in his 1852, "An Essay on the Trial by Jury," instructs:

"For more than six hundred years -- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 -- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their light, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such law."

Few in today's criminal justice system take kindly to "citizens" having anything resembling an opinion on the law. Therefore, we wouldn't want to repeat any of these words to a judge or prosecutor. Nonetheless, how one votes in the jury room is not supposed to be scrutinized by the legal-eagles outside. Which means, use your best judgment, do what you wish, and then just be quiet about it.

For more on this subject, visit The Fully Informed Jury Association.(1) And, while you are there, rip off a copy of "the Jurors' Handbook: A Citizens Guide to Jury Duty."

1. <http://www.fija.org/>

<http://nowscape.com/fija/_hard.htm>

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