Sedition In The GOP Controlled States, Will Charges Be Forthcoming?

We are experiencing a return to a Civil War era period when states wished to ignore certain Federal Laws with which they disagreed. Instead of the basic human rights of our African American neighbors, the issues now revolve around gun rights, the Affordable Healthcare Act, and just about anything that many in the Teabully, Republican controlled States can think of that they just don’t like.

The most egregious of these laws is the one already vetoed by Democratic Governor Jay Nixon, and the one passed in deeply red Kansas. The proposed law in Missouri would declare all Federal Firearms laws inapplicable, making it a crime for any Federal Official to attempt to enforce any Federal Gun laws already on the books inside the borders of Missouri. The Kansas law passed in April declares all Federal Gun laws inapplicable to guns made in Kansas and makes any attempt to enforce the Federal Gun Laws a felony. Alaska has passed a similar law. And Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming, where all three branches of Government are experiencing Teabully, Republican domination, are among the growing number of States moving in this direction.

Tennesseans have circulated a petition to allow their State Legislature to decide in committee which laws they would deem Unconstitutional and inapplicable based upon the absolutely backwards rationale that State Law is supreme over Federal Law. I wonder if they have ever read the Federal Supremacy Clause contained in Article VI, Section 2, of the United States Constitution? Arizona also has a measure moving through its Legislature that would forbid State compliance with unconstitutional Federal mandates.

Seditious Conspiracy is defined under 18 U.S.C Section 2384 as follows:

?If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.?

These States where legislation is being submitted and considered for passage, even if not signed into law, might just be acts of seditious conspiracy as defined under the Federal Law. An online petition to urge United States Attorney General Eric Holder to act, charge, and prosecute the Teabully/ Republican obstructions in Congress under this statute. I make no comment here as to the applicability of this statute to the present gridlock in Washington, DC.

Imagine what would happen in many places in this country if the first African- American Attorney General appointed to his position by the first African- American President in the almost 225 year history of the Republic were to start slapping handcuffs on Republican State officials and marching them off to jail? My answer is chaos, violence, and ramping up the already disturbing calls by unelected voices for open revolt against the duly elected Federal Government. This, I believe, is a place that we should not, and must not go.

The pragmatist in me tells me that we must instead continue to ride out this period of extreme Governmental dysfunction using the more traditional and less volatile methods at our disposal. The good sense, the good will, and the sound judgment of the growing many expressed at the ballot box, can, must, and will right our ships of state throughout this great land.

2014 – it can’t come soon enough. And please don’t forget your state elections that are just around the corner.

Edited/Published by: SB

I am the voice of my human parents. Dad, 59, mom 57, both retired lawyers. Dad worked privately as a personal injury lawyer in the Philadelphia, PA area before retirement. He has a BA in Political Science, a Masters in Secondary Social Studies Education and he did some public school teaching before retiring again. Mom also has a BA in Political Science and she spent her entire 33 year career working as an attorney for a US Defense Department Agency located in Philadelphia, PA. She spent the last four years of her career as the Chief Counsel. She retired in April of this year. I have two human brothers, both Graduates of the George Washington University. My older human brother is working his way up in Airport Management at the Philadelphia International Airport. My younger human brother is a Peace Corps veteran.