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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
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.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
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.
The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp
by Steve Washam
based on a telling by George Gordon
Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few possessions--especially his traps--and drove south. Several weeks later he stopped in a small town just north of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. It was a Saturday morning--a lazy day--when he walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven or eight of the town's local citizens. The traveler spoke, "Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?"Some of the oldtimers looked at him like he was crazy.
"You must be a stranger in these parts," they said.
"I am. I'm from North Dakota," said the stranger.
"In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs," one old man explained."A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to die!"
He lifted up his leg. "I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the swamp."
Another old fellow said, "Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm bit off!" "Those pigs have been free since the Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for over a hundred years. They're wild and they're dangerous. You can't trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself."
Every man nodded his head in agreement.
The old trapper said, "Thank you so much for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?"
They said, "Well, yeah, it's due south--straight down the road." But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he'd meet a terrible fate.
He said, "Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load them into the wagon."
And they did.
Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove on down the road. The townsfolk thought they'd never see him again.
Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up to the general store, got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more sacks of corn. After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.
Two weeks later he returned and, again, bought ten sacks of corn.
This went on for a month. And then two months, and three. Every week or two the old trapper would come into town on a Saturday morning, load up ten sacks of corn and drive off south into the swamp. The stranger soon became a legend in the little village and the subject of much speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed this man, that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be consumed by the wild and free hogs.
One morning the man came into town as usual. Everyone thought he wanted more corn.
He got off the wagon and went into the store where the usual group of men were gathered around the stove. He took off his gloves. "Gentlemen," he said, "I need to hire about ten or fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand hogs out in the swamp, penned up, and they're all hungry. I've got to get them to market right away." "You've WHAT in the swamp?" asked the storekeeper, incredulously. "I have six thousand hogs penned up. They haven't eaten for two or three days, and they'll starve if I don't get back there to feed and take care of them."
One of the oldtimers said, "You mean you've captured the wild hogs of the Okefenokee?"
"That's right."
"How did you do that? What did you do?" the men urged, breathlessly. One of them exclaimed, "But I lost my arm!"
"I lost my brother!" cried another.
"I lost my leg to those wild boars!" chimed a third. The trapper said, "Well, the first week I went in there they were wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn't come out. I dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the wagon. Every day I'd spread a sack of corn.
"The old pigs would have nothing to do with it. But the younger pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it was to root out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn first. "I did this every day. Pretty soon, even the old pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn, after all, they were all free; they were not penned up. They could run off in any direction they wanted at any time. "The next thing was to get them used to eating in the same place all the time. So, I selected a clearing, and I started putting the corn in the clearing.
"At first they wouldn't come to the clearing. It was too far. It was too open. It was a nuisance to them.
"But the very young decided that it was easier to take the corn in the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it was easier to come to the clearing every day.
"And so the pigs learned to come to the clearing every day to get their free corn. They could still subsidize their diet with roots and snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were all free. They could run in any direction at any time. There were no bounds upon them. "The next step was to get them used to fence posts. So I put fence posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in the underbrush so that they wouldn't get suspicious or upset, after all, they were just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the trees and the brush. The corn was there every day. It was easy to walk in between the posts, get the corn, and walk back out.
"This went on for a week or two. Shortly they became very used to walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and walking back out through the fence posts.
"The next step was to put one rail down at the bottom. I also left a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through the openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one rail, after all, it was no real threat to their freedom or independence--they could always jump over the rail and flee in any direction at any time.
"Now I decided that I wouldn't feed them every day. I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn't feed them, the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them-- but I only fed them every other day. Then I put a second rail around the posts.
"Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. Because now they were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and finding their own food, they now needed me. They needed my corn every other day." "So I trained them that I would feed them every day if they came in through a gate and I put up a third rail around the fence.
"But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will. "Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well."
"Yesterday I closed the last gate and today I need you to help me take these pigs to market."
The price of free corn
The parable of the pigs has a serious moral lesson. This story is about federal money being used to bait, trap and enslave a once free and independent people.
Federal welfare, in its myriad forms, has reduced not only individuals to a state of dependency; state and local governments are also on the fast track to elimination, due to their functions being subverted by the command and control structures of federal "revenue sharing" programs. Please copy this parable and send it to all of your state and local elected leaders and other concerned citizens. Tell them: "Just say NO to federal corn." The bacon you save may be your own.
(c) 1997, The Idaho Observer. All rights reserved.
Permission granted to reproduce for non commercial purposes in entirety including this notice.
"The Obama Media rushed to the aid of their 'anointed messiah' and joined the amen chorus of paid Obama bloggers who had immediately went to guns in a take-no-prisoners attack on the Ohio voter who foolishly dared to question Obama’s plan to pillage every Joe the Plumber across America, who still believes that freedom not - doled out free stuff, individual achievement - not government entitlements, will empower every American."
"Is this the kind of 'school reform' Obama has in mind?
"Some of GLSEN's recommended reading material implicitly condones criminal sexual contact between adults with minors. Many such incidents are described in erotic and nostalgic passages. I've yet to see 'warnings' about the episodes in these books, which surely mislead thousands of vulnerable kids. I wrote in detail about what I will share below in 2002, yet the books in question, and many more just as objectionable, are still offered by GLSEN for sale on its site."
and
"If we want a totalitarian, pansexual society, with its accompanying disease, dysfunction and abuse, and no room for nobility, goodness and tradition, then we need to make sure we vote for Obama with all his various revolutionary hangers-on, including Jennings."
"Barack Obama is not a messiah. He's a man, nothing more. Despite what so many of his supporters believe, he puts his pants on one leg at a time.
(Judas from Jesus Christ Superstar: "All your followers are blind!")
"And if he's elected president, it will be recorded that he does have a middle name – unless of course, politically correct liberals write the history books.
"That really would be darkness on the land, Who knows what other lies they would perpetrate and foist upon us.
"While most might laud Obama's personality as a needed polar opposite to G.W. Bush, especially in an era of required international relations repair, I pose to you that Obama's personality pendulum swing is way too far to the other side. An 'accommodating-agreeable-conciliator-favoring compromise' type of personality is good for closing a used car deal, but not the one that can lead our country through tough economic times and decisive crises or emergency conflicts that require often unpopular actions.
"Even Obama's voting record proves that. His own Democrat colleagues have a difficult time understanding, when he was Illinois state senator, how he voted 'present' (instead of 'yes' or 'no') 129 times, including a number of noncommittal tallies on issues like gun rights and abortion.
"You've also heard that Obama doesn't have any executive experience at running a government or business. I would pose to you the reason why is simply because he's not comfortable making executive decisions. An 'executive conciliator' will overly depend upon others, at times compromising judgment and needed immediate action to appease the masses. Proof of that is seen in how Obama has handled his and our 'emergency' economic decisions."
and
"Obama's inability to draw and hold hard lines is the primary factor why he repeatedly struggles with, and caves and morphs into, the polls or people in front of him. More than any other politician in history, he has flip flopped on a host of critical issues: Iraq, Iran, gay rights, NAFTA, abortion, race, religion, gun control, etc. It's one thing to be political, but it's quite another to be a chronic people pleaser under pressure. Swaying to political expediency is not the leadership quality we need in tough times. Sooner or later, that character flaw will bite Obama big time and, unfortunately, us too."
I PREDICT -- There will be a contrived crisis to "prove" Obama's mettle, a crisis created much like a television production. Then he will come off as a "decisive leader," as long as he follows the script.
by my colleague Rory O'Connor). No, he went after WGN Radio's Milt Rosenberg -- a genial University of Chicago professor who for 35 years has hosted possibly the most civilized two hours of commercial radio anywhere in America, 'Extension 720.'""Obama says he will change Washington. That he will govern in a bipartisan way and get Congress unstuck. I want to believe him. But I think that this current wave of criticism is practice for the years ahead, and I am not encouraged by the Obama campaign's instinct to dump a pile of bricks on anyone who won't engage them on their terms. I mean, wasn't one reason Democrats liked Obama was that he represented a break from the partisan rancor of the Clinton years?"
