Remember in my last correspondence we were having a concert with Paw Revere and the Whiskers? A very educated group that, putting to good use the entertainment industry. We all sang along with a number of Paw’s great hits and enjoyed ourselves immensely. I asked him after the show how he thought his Purrteenth Amendment tour was affecting the community and whether that high degree in American legal history might not better de-program listeners if he came on as a lecturing professor at colleges and other educational facilities. After all, I opined, he would be more respected as a cat wearing pinstripe fur while quoting books and documentaries than just a mere guitar banging entertainer. His response: colleges were not inviting speakers that are purists on historical facts. He would never get the message out going that route. Dr. Paw then named Garfield as an example of potential success by playing the comedian. It came to him that Garfield has acquired a huge audience out there; people go out of their way to catch his jokes.

“I figured by getting into entertainment it might work for me. Instead of wasting time on frivolous subjects like Garfield does, I would use that stage to educate the cats that will soon educate the Sapiens.”

Paw then gave as an example the song, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” written by the Beatles in 1967. In that one Mr. K wanted to challenge the world by way of entertainment. If the enemy could by such distractions introduce false philosophies, surely our Paw Revere might in like mode resurrect the truths. Just another form of fighting fire with fire.

Okay, next witness. Now comes a cat that has something on the Marbury v. Madison case.

“Yo, get down off that limb and tell us what you’ve been waiting all this time to meow out!”

This one states that he is a 14th Amendment cat, same as all of the others around here. Purrrty interesting, as there were 65 years between the subject of his expertise and the Fraudulent Fourteenth. Well, now, we’ll just pause while he circles and hunches his back, hops sideways over toward me to let it be known he does not care for such sarcasm. I’ll assure him it’s for the purpose of emphasizing his story, the one we shall hear in a minute; uh, it seems we’ve got hecklers. What is this? Looks like their leader is masquerading as one of us, but (if I hear him right) “one with different views.” And he’s leading a whole band of argufiers with him. I think we’re in for a cat fight.

Uh oh. My 14th Amendment cat has just stepped aside with a “nonchalant attitude.” He sees the same as the rest of us that our intruder is nothing but a polecat, disowned even by his fellow weasels. “Big Daddy Cat,” he’s calling himself, and he’s renouncing all of our patrons in this Tuna Shop. Wup! One of the locals, Xerox Willy, now marches over and claws him across the face with three slashes, leaving a big Z across his face, and slinks off sniggering and purring a single word: “Thinner.”

That puzzles me. Let’s get over here and see what it was all about. “Hey, Xerox, don’t you have Zorro and Stephen King mixed up?”

“No. I may copycat a lot – that’s why they call me Xerox Willy – but I was trying to be original in combining the two; the Z stands for zootic, meaning diseased.”

“Uh! okay, I think I get it, but don’t you mean epizootic?”

“No, I took off the epic part because he won’t be spreading much of his philosophy amongst us cats anymore. We’ll not have New World Odors like him thinking they can just waltz in and occupy the forum. Since you’re reporting these happenings to the Sapiens, I want them to know we don’t put up with polecats claiming superiority over us. We are the sovereigns.”

Um, can y’all hear that loud, collective “Meow!” from the Amen corner?

Whatever else may happen here today, a perplexed Big Daddy Cat has just turned away and left. Some of us know better than to let that cat’s nose get inside our tent; we catnip it in the bud.

Okay, as you can see, we have our days and disruptions. So now let’s get this 14th Amendment cat to tell us about Marshall v. Madison. We shall call him Midnight, even though he’s white as snow. You’ll know why after hearing his story. But first, as I’ve said before and will say again, we never reveal the true names of these cats because the catbaggers (something like carpetbaggers) would find and have them back in the bag before we could even purr twice. Which reflects a recurring problem in our own nature. It seems no matter how patriotic one is, nor determined in the stands we take, and regardless of all the training we’ve gone through, our natural instinct simply kicks in. We have already lost a few of our out-of-the-bag cats because of this natural compulsion to degrade ourselves. They took the bait when their previous owners showed up with a bag of cat treats and just called out, “He-ere, kitty, kitty, kitty,” and before you knew it they leapt to the call without thinking and back in the bag they went.

We once lost a cat because the bagger was using artificial bait. He had this battery operated can opener, showed up and just turned it on.You know what the sound of a can opener does to us; practically every cat in the shop leapt to its feet and, seeing the bagger was a stranger, only reluctantly held back. However, it isn’t easy for a cat to turn down his previous owner. So don’t think it frivolous that we never reveal the true identities of our friends. You might’ve even noticed that on those few occasions we’ve allowed an on-camera interview or a photo release, we distorted the face or put a black rectangle over the eyes. Now to our story.
“Mr. Midnight, in what way can we link the Marshall v. Madison case with the 14th Amendment?”

“Well, there is always a beginning, you know, to everything; so, in order to help people understand the ‘14th Amendment,’ let’s go back there where the real battle was drawn and look at whose was the first claw to throw down that gauntlet against States Rights.”

“You mean Marbury v. Madison?”

“No, that’s an incorrect call. The truth is that it was the Chief Justice of the supreme Court. He came fighting James Madison with practically every word penned in his dictum. Notice I identify the document as a dictum instead of a Case. Also take note that I never capitalize the word ‘supreme’ when referring to that Court. One of the things you will find out here is that, at the time of this Court, the constitution not only gave very little power to the judiciary but the first cats put in office didn’t get around to naming what the Court was to be called. The term ‘supreme’ was purposely ratified in the lower case, inferring an adjective. But some polecat then stuck his nose in and ‘amended’ that portion of the constitution, making it integral with the proper name by capitalization. I can assure you, that didn’t transpire by way of Article V. And as for my pointing out that this famous treatise was no court case but merely an Arbiter dictum, hear me out and you’ll know yourself that such is the fact.

“For here the seeds of destruction were planted, needing only to be watered, tilled and cared into fruition. This is where the canker worm began boring into the minds of the people, gnawing at the vitals of our constitutional organs, relentlessly driving the established Confederacy of States to accept nationalism and finally put it in print…”

This was going to be an astounding story. I took notes and will paraphrase the more urgent things covered by Midnight in that conversation. First is James Madison and his understanding of our States’ Rights. Let me quote from his vast writings two arguments I found to be very clear and to the point. One you may peruse in Federalist #45: It explains that “...The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” I should not have to remind you readers that the word few means “not many,” and always refers to the lesser part of any whole. Madison also stated that such delegated powers were were not only few, but even defined. These “defined” powers understandably left no mystery as to their identity. Hence the opposite was declared for our several States’ numerous and indefinite powers.

Purrrty interesting, I must say.

It will be remembered that within the Constitution’s first draft, Madison had inserted the words “national government.” But after the States gathered for ratification the first thing they struck out was that term, “national government.” They replaced it with the words “United States,” meaning exactly the same thing as understood in the Articles of Confederation, which clearly spoke loudly against any kind of “national” government.

Keeping this in mind I quote Madison from the Virginia Resolution: “...The States then being the parties to the constitutional Compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that as the parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort...” This was stated on January 7, 1800.

It is clear from these writings that the Constitution’s drafter and chief statesman of the time had given his definite opinion as to what he meant in the said document and how he understood its final draft after the debates leading up to its passage. One should take notice that their agreed-upon proposal was sent to the States to become ratified – not to their federal chambers, but to the States.

This much said, I believe we have a right understanding of the federal government knowing few and defined powers, our State governments possessing innumerable and indefinite reservations. It is observable that Madison in his writings has also defined the supreme Court’s role regarding controversies inside the States. In other words, the State Courts have the final authority for all cases inside the States.

What’s instructive here is that members of the supreme Court knew their limits. In those early days the supreme Court of this government played but a modest role in its trinity of branches. One need only peruse Article III to see the crumbs it received from the whole pie gracefully served up at the constitutional convention. In those early days, the office of chief justice was looked down upon. In fact, the first chief justice of the supreme Court, John Jay, gave up that seat voluntarily so he could become governor of New York. And John Marshall refused an offer by John Adams for a position on the court two years before finally accepting the seat as chief justice.

The last of the federalists, and this is well known, were being smothered out of office. John Adams so willingly accepted the new bill allowing sixteen more federal judges to be seated (Marbury and 15 others – a then total of 42 judges) that he spent his last hours, literally all of them, in his office getting those he appointed commissioned and sealed. Thomas Jefferson would take his oath the very next day, and he had made clear his opposition to such an increase of judicial officers; so this kept Adams busy until close to midnight seeing to it that the appointments got finalized and even sealed by the Secretary of State, whose name we shall leave out for now. At the end of the Adams administration – into the midnight hours – he accomplished this mission and got them into office before Jefferson took over the following day. Those seated were called the Midnight judges.

Next morning Jefferson found upon his desk the sealed commissions, but refused to order them delivered thereby resting the appointments in fieri (incomplete). Both Jefferson and Madison understood this as having killed them.

Enter John Marshall. The judges sued, demanding that a mandamus be delivered to them commanding their completion of the process. Remember, until this time the only official opinions put forth concerning the Court’s powers were those of James Madison and a few anti-federalists such as Brutus (a code name honoring the assassin of Julius Caesar, but believed to be Robert Yates). It was argued by Brutus that if any branch should possess power to review the constitutionality of laws, then Congress, seeing as how its members were controlled by election and therefore answered to the people.

But what does John Marshall say? He comes to the Court session where neither Jefferson nor Madison would appear; for, as they saw it, that body had no jurisdiction in the matter. Marshall even so states, but continues with vain jangling and nonsense about his opinion, which, as stated, has no jurisdiction (this from his own mouth) and therefore no place in American case law. True, he wrote that famous “null and void” phrase. But the man invoking the term was at the same time setting a precedent for a “judicial review” power by the Court, an authority not of the constitution but rather fantasized by John Marshall.

One need only read the debates to learn that this question regarding judicial power had been brought up two times, yet failed to be placed in the constitutuion. The fact that such authority is not defined in Article III and was rejected twice is proof enough. Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden. This constitutional statement makes clear that supreme Court justices cannot create law from the bench. Their acts are judicial, not legislative. The supreme Court cannot legitimately exercise “judicial review,” as, by the very nature of that office, its judges enter the case after the facts; and nothing they might say, even if granted legislative powers, could become law if passed after the facts. Hmmm! I mean, “Meow.”

And just who was Secretary of State on the night that John Adams was forcing all these commissions through? None other than John Marshall.

Yes, my Sapien friends. It was John Marshall now sitting on a case where, even if the court had original jurisdiction in the matter, he could not have legally helped decide it, for having been an actual party to those commissions. This is typical, and not all that unusual, for the actions of Marshall. Commissioned to be chief justice while still serving as Secretary of State, for one month and four days he held both offices. Let us also point out here that, in 1827, we see Marshall still holding that supreme Court seat while also participating in the Virginia Convention. Oops, that cat sprang out much too fast, and has now gone prowling after further clues.

A curious cat myself, I find it purrrrty interesting that just about everything stated in his unofficial decision contradicted what Madison had said; this with Madison now holding the position that Marshall had occupied until March 4, 1801. And another purrrty interesting aspect of this is Marshall’s implied power to place mandamuses on other branches of government.

A thing that mystifies me is that no one seems to have made an issue out of this at the time. It must be remembered that, in the history of mandamuses, they always were used for the purpose of commanding inferior judges to perform exactly as they should. Never in the history of the world had a mandamus been imposed outside the judicial branch, for it was strictly a device for controlling their own. The very thought that Chief Justice John Marshall could command one of the other branches of government was unheard of, and this established a nationalism that would eventually become legislation from the bench, a fraudulent “14th Amendment” disguised as law attempting to decree in writing the national powers that had been accumulating ever since this Marshall vs. Madison “case.”

Notwithstanding Section 5 of said “amendment” wherein Congress exercises powers to enforce such nationalism, we see the judiciary still doing all the lawmaking. Some refer lightly to the increasingy tragic situation by euphemism as judicial review, judicial legislation or judicial protection. Call it what you will, but we all know it’s judicial tyranny.

So what we have here is a string of Court rulings that supersede all State authority, legislation and executive powers. It’s law according to the supreme Court’s position, whatever its whim at the time. Article V could amend the constitution and grant them those powers if the people really wanted it that way.

You Sapiens have presently got nine chief justices making all your laws for the land.

Purrrty legislative, as I can with my better eyes see.

The First Freedom