No Mr. Obama, You Cannot Do That!

No Constitutional Basis For Obama To Force States To Take Refugees

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “So where do we get the evidence for this?  1798, John Adams, President, signs the act of the Congress – which he should never have done – signing thus into law this thing called the Alien and Sedition Acts.  We’re going to concentrate on the alien part.  What is a Syrian refugee according to international law and American law?  The same thing that a Mexican is, an alien.  We’re not at war with the Syrians.  We’re not in a declared war.  So are they enemies?  No.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  So where do we get the evidence for this?  1798, John Adams, President, signs the act of the Congress – which he should never have done – signing thus into law this thing called the Alien and Sedition Acts.  We’re going to concentrate on the alien part.  What is a Syrian refugee according to international law and American law?  The same thing that a Mexican is, an alien.  We’re not at war with the Syrians.  We’re not in a declared war.  So are they enemies?  No.  Some of them may be because they may be members of terrorist organizations, but that would have to be declared.  Your average rank and file refugee, we’re told by the libs that want to guilt trip us into doing this, is not an enemy.  They’re buddies.  They’re friends.

So what was at issue during the Alien and Sedition Acts?  I’ll tell you what was at issue.  It was Adams saying that he feared that – you’ve got to know a little bit about what was going on in 1798 or so to understand just how appropriate of an analogy this is.  What was it that the Congress and the Adams administration feared was happening in Virginia and other states that caused them to pass the alien part of the Alien and Sedition Acts?  You’re going to love this.  They feared that there were French people – how appropriate is that – that were visiting or were currently residing in those states, weren’t naturalized citizens, but were residing in those states and may be spies or may be conspirators to some kind of a French action against the United States.

Remember, this is at the height of the French Revolution.  The French are trying to go to war and were about to go to war with the English.  They would go to war with the Prussians.  And then Napoleon would try to go to war with the rest of the planet.  It was feared that these French were a bunch of plants, in other words, they were – they could have been spies.  They were conspirators, sleeper cells.  In the parlance of our time, Mr. Lebowski, sleeper cells.  The Adams administration said: Look, we have the authority to kick these people out.  Remember, at that time we were not at war with France.  France had not declared war on us.  We had not declared war on France.  There was tension but there was no war.

What did Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, and other Virginians do in response to this?  They wrote what we call today the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions on nullification and interposition.  This is precisely and almost identically the exact same scenario that is being confronted today by those 32 governors and the citizens of those 32 states to tell Obama –

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and if the Congress gets involved in this and tries to force them to do this – to go pound sand.   Let me give you the constitutional ammo, not that it would matter in 2015 because we don’t have a constitution.  The Constitution is dead, mortis.  Stick a fork in it.  After the Kentucky Resolution was passed in September 1798, then James Madison, the author of the Virginia Resolution for interposition, gave it to John Taylor of Caroline County.  John Taylor then entered it in on December 18^th – I’m going from memory here, by the way.  This is all in my book, John Taylor of Caroline County, American Statesman.  This entire story is in there, and the speeches that I’m about to share with you.  Taylor gets Madison’s Virginia Resolutions on interposition and he files them in the meeting of the Virginia Assembly on the 10^th of December 1798.  Then he presents the case as to why the Virginia Assembly should pass them.

During the debate, other people speak and they say: No, the Congress has the authority to do this.  If Congress says they can kick these aliens out, then they have the authority.  We shouldn’t have ratified the Constitution but that’s the fact, blah, blah, blah.  Taylor will have none of it, and neither will most of the other delegates.  The Virginia Assembly ultimately approves this.  Then they give little Jimmy Madison the task of writing the report.  That’s why it’s called the Virginia Report of 1799-1800 based on the Virginia resolutions of December 21, 1798.  Taylor introduced them on the 10^th of December.  They were passed on the 21^st of December.  There’s your history in a nutshell.  What was said during the debate?

Representative Ruffin, we’ll begin with him.  I’m going to read this to you verbatim.  This is a transcription of the debate in the Virginia Assembly.  How appropriate as well that I was reading the story earlier of Mr. Janks [ph?] who went to the council meeting to oppose Mr. McAuliffe, the governor’s, actions to try to force Virginians to accept these refugees.  Of course, if Janks were opposing Obama, this would be appropriate.

[reading]

The cases, however, Mr. Ruffin said, were extremely different. Congress alone could determine upon war or peace: consequently, alien enemies were proper subjects for congressional legislation: but that alien friends were exclusively subject to the sovereignty of the several individual states; as the twelfth article of the amendments to the Federal Constitution expressly declares, [Mike: Of course, he’s talking about the 10^th Amendment because there were 14 amendments that were submitted.] that “the powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” And as at the same time, he said, the only power given by that compact to the general government, over alien friends, was in the ninth section of the first article, it must follow that this was one of the rights reserved to the states. [Mike: You talk about a mouthful. If that’s not a mouthful, I don’t know what is.] The gentleman last up, he said, had contended however, that this power was rightfully exercised by Congress, and had taken the broad ground of construction and implication, upon which to erect his fabric.

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Mike:  Note here that at no point in any of these discussions will you hear whether or not the presidency is the proper lodging place for this power.  If the power did exist, the presidency is not where it would be rested.  It would be rested in Paul Ryan’s House of Representin’.  Back to the testimony from 10 December 1798.

[reading]

Construction and implication, Mr. Ruffin said, was a doctrine which he had hoped was banished from the councils of America. It was a doctrine which the people of America had unanimously and uniformly protested against. It was the exercise of this kind of right by the British parliament which involved us in a war with that government. It was to guard against the exercise of such a power, that the state constitutions were formed: and it was that abhorrence in America to constructive and implied rights, that induced the specific delineation of congressional powers. Let them admit, he said, the position of the worthy member, and then mark the extent to which it would carry them. In the preamble to the Constitution, the ends designed to be produced by that compact are enumerated. [Mike: Then he reads part of the preamble. Then he circles back.] . . . that those constructive and implied rights are given: Suppose, said Mr. Ruffin, the general government should be of opinion that those objects would be produced in a higher degree by continuing the present members in office for ten years or for life? Was there any person who then heard him, who would think such an exercise of power legitimate? Certainly not. Yet he contended that such a power was as impliedly given by the Constitution, as that which Congress had taken upon itself to exercise over alien friends. Mr. Ruffin then concluded by observing, that as it was then late, and the committee appeared to be fatigued, he should reserve the rest of his observations for another opportunity.

[end reading]

Mike:  Now I’m going to fast forward to the next day. Another representative, Mr. Allen, now on the same subject. This is Friday, 15 December 1798.

[reading]

But, Mr. Allen averred, that the admission of alien friends . . .

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Mike: Remember, a Syrian refugee is an alien.  Because we’re not at war with Syria, they’re an alien friend.  That’s what we would call them under international law when we actually had a constitution and we kind of obeyed it, or at least kind of referred to it.  Even if we didn’t obey it, at least we had to go: All right, there’s this thing called the Constitution.  We have to at least pretend like we read the darn thing.  No more.  Now we make it up as you go along.  By the way, folks, if you want to be on the Veritas Radio Network Mike Church Show, 844-5-CRUSADE.  Back to the story:

[reading]

But Mr. Allen averred, that the admission of alien friends into a country was not a matter of favour; and even if were, when they were in a country they were entitled to certain rights, which he enumerated, and which, he said, were derived to them from the laws of nature, nations, and humanity. The gentleman admitted that an alien could not be deprived of life or property without a trial, and that by jury. If so, surely they should not be deprived of their liberty without trial, and that too by jury. But, perhaps, in these modern days, life and property only are to be held sacred, while liberty is to be exposed to the whim or caprice of a single man. If, indeed, this be the case, and liberty is considered of less value than property, then the argument of the gentleman should have some weight. But, we are taught by the Constitution to rank liberty next to life. If, therefore, an alien cannot be deprived of his property without trial by jury, he certainly should not be deprived of his liberty without the same kind of trial. On that account, then, he said, the law was apparently unconstitutional. But suppose, he said, it was absolutely necessary to provide by law for sending aliens out of this country . . .

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Mike:  Ladies and gentlemen, let me pause right here on the Mike Church Show on the Veritas Radio Network, Crusade Channel.  Thanks for listening today.  Let me pause right here and point out, have you heard the word “state” in Allen or Ruffin’s monologues?  No.  What have you heard?  What are they calling their state?  Country.  He’s referring to Virginia as a country.  If only we had people that thought like that today other than me and about 18 of you.

[reading]

But suppose, he said, it was absolutely necessary to provide by law for sending aliens out of this country, who had the power to do so? Congress, or the states? He declared that the states had. He read the first clause of the ninth section respecting the migration of persons prior to the year 1808, as proof of the assertion.

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Mike:  Some are going to say: Yeah, but what about that clause?  Everyone that was alive at the time knew when they ratified the Constitution that clause was aimed, it didn’t express it.  Perhaps it should have, but they knew it was aimed at the importation of slaves.  It wasn’t aimed at refugees.  It was aimed at slaves and slavery and the slave trade.  Now let me make a logical point to you using a little bit of philosophia perennis.  If the state, therefore, has the power to expel someone, a refugee, and alien friend, it must then follow that if they have the power to expel, then they previously had the power to admit.  Does everybody understand this?  Is everyone with me on this?  You’ve got this.  If you have the power to expel, then you must have the power to admit.  This should settle the argument once and for all.  Of course, it’s not going to because no one is going to listen to this.  They’re not going to listen to me, certainly, and they’re not going to listen to some yahoo in knickers and white bobbysocks from the 18^th century.  They’re not going to listen to James Madison, and even if they did, they’d get laughed out of the room.  Does that mean that what I just told you was incorrect?  No, it’s not incorrect.  It’s the truth.

End Mike Church Show Transcript