This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Constitutional Nullification

Constitutional Nullification is a process whereby the Constitution of the United States is effectively nullified but processes that make it infective. That is what is happening in America today. We have a Constitution - but it doesn't matter. It is as if it's written on toilet paper.

You might ask, "OK Perkel - that the hell are you talking about?"

The 4th Amendment says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." There is no way for this to mean everyone in the world for no reason at all.

So how can this be? How do they get away with this?

In 2005 we discovered that the Bush Administration was tapping our phone calls at AT&T office at Fulsom street in San Francisco. An engineer who worked there named mark Knein blew the whistle and exposed that the government was listening in on the phone calls of every AT&T customer. I had an AT&T cellphone at the time so therefore I was a terrorist suspect.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued AT&T over the government spy program and the NSA stepped in to stop the lawsuit from proceeding. I personally was stitting in the courtroom in San Francisco and watch the NSA tell the judge to dismiss the case because proceedings would reveal national secrets. But the national secret they were hiding was that they were undermining the Constitution.

The judge continued the case.

So then they got Congress involved and Congress passed a law giving AT&T retroactive immunity and the law says that if the government orders you to do something that is illegal and unconstitutional that you have legal immunity if it is determined that you broke the law at the governments request. But if the government comes to you and demands that you break the law and you refuse - you can go to jail.

So now we know, thank to whistle blower Edward Snowden that there's a program called Prism and that they are not only tapping every phone company, they are tapping Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, Dropbox, and AOL with direct access to all their services sucking up our email, phone conversations, chat, texts, and our location.

They know where we are, who we talk to, who we text, email, everything. And between Apple and Microsoft they can install back doors in your personal computers to monitor anything you do online. They could even turn on the camera and microphone in your laptop and monitor you inside your home.

But don't blame those companies. yes - they lied to you when they made public statement saying that they weren't doing this. "Isn't that wrong?", you might ask. Yes - but you see they had to lie to you because they are required by law to lie to you. If they told you what is really going on - they go to jail.

So this is what I call Constitutional Nullification. We have a secret court called FISA that makes secret law and secret rulings that require you to lie and prohibit you from telling the truth. If you violate the Constitution they give you immunity so that if you do the wrong thing you are rewarded and if you do the right thing you are penalized.

Constitutional Nullification is when you have a constitution and it means nothing. That is what is happening now. That is what Congress and the president are advocating. And it's not just one party - it's both of them. When you look at the very idea that government can require you to lie ask yourself, "Is this what America has come to?"


We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?