Making the rounds on Facebook right now: "The Dick Act of 1902"

[OmahaBlueDog]

DICK ACT of 1902 ... CAN'T BE REPEALED (GUN CONTROL FORBIDDEN) - Protection Against Tyrannical Government CAN NOT BE REPEALED (GUN CONTROL FORBIDDEN) The Trump Card Enacted by the Congress Further Asserting the Second Amendment as Untouchable. The Dick Act of 1902 also known as the Efficiency of Militia Bill H.R. 11654, of June 28, 1902 invalidates all so-called gun-control laws. It also divides the militia into three distinct and separate entities. The three classes H.R. 11654 provides for are the organized militia, henceforth known as the National Guard of the State, Territory and District of Columbia, the unorganized militia and the regular army. The militia encompasses every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 45. All members of the unorganized militia have the absolute personal right and 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms of any type, and as many as they can afford to buy. The Dick Act of 1902 cannot be repealed; to do so would violate bills of attainder and ex post facto laws which would be yet another gross violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The President of the United States has zero authority without violating the Constitution to call the National Guard to serve outside of their State borders. The National Guard Militia can only be required by the National Government for limited purposes specified in the Constitution (to uphold the laws of the Union; to suppress insurrection and repel invasion). These are the only purposes for which the General Government can call upon the National Guard. Attorney General Wickersham advised President Taft, the Organized Militia (the National Guard) cannot be employed for offensive warfare outside the limits of the United States. The Honorable William Gordon, in a speech to the House on Thursday, October 4, 1917, proved that the action of President Wilson in that he felt Wilson ought to have been impeached. During the war with England an attempt was made by Congress to pass a bill authorizing the president to draft 100,000 men between the ages of 18 and 45 to invade enemy territory, Canada. The bill was defeated in the House by Daniel Webster on the precise point that Congress had no such power over the militia as to authorize it to empower the President to draft them into the regular army and send them out of the country. The fact is that the President has no constitutional right, under any circumstances, to draft men from the militia to fight outside the borders of the USA, and not even beyond the borders of their respective states. Today, we have a constitutional LAW which still stands in waiting for the legislators to obey the Constitution which they swore an oath to uphold. Charles Hughes of the American Bar Association (ABA) made a speech which is contained in the Appendix to Congressional Record, House, September 10, 1917, pages 6836-6840 which states: The militia, within the meaning of these provisions of the Constitution is distinct from the Army of the United States. In these pages we also find a statement made by Daniel Webster, that the great principle of the Constitution on that subject is that the militia is the militia of the States and of the General Government; and thus being the militia of the States, there is no part of the Constitution worded with greater care and with more scrupulous jealousy than that which grants and limits the power of Congress over it. This limitation upon the power to raise and support armies clearly establishes the intent and purpose of the framers of the Constitution to limit the power to raise and maintain a standing army to voluntary enlistment, because if the unlimited power to draft and conscript was intended to be conferred, it would have been a useless and puerile thing to limit the use of money for that purpose. Conscripted armies can be paid, but they are not required to be, and if it had been intended to confer the extraordinary power to draft the bodies of citizens and send them out of the country in direct conflict with the limitation upon the use of the militia imposed by the same section and article, certainly some restriction or limitation would have been imposed to restrain the unlimited use of such power. The Honorable William Gordon More Info With over 300 Million guns in the United States, the federal CORPORATE government (federal gov't defined as corporation under 28 U.S.C. Section 3002 (15) and the states are subdivisions of the corporation, 28 U.S.C. Section 3002 (10), cannot ban arms or stop people from defending themselves against a tyrannical government. I read somewhere that just the State of North Carolina can call up 20-30 divisions of unorganized militia (would be about 200,000-300,000 armed North Carolinians) on a moment's notice. Imagine the State of Texas or Oklahoma if that's the case? Amazingly, even if the US tries to ban all arms through backdoor measures like domestic violence laws (Violence Against Women Act, 18 U.S.C. Section 922 (g)) or through an unconstitutional U.N. declaration adopted by our current Marxist unconstitutional Congress, no treaty can supersede the Constitution:"This [Supreme] Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty." - Reid v. Covert, October 1956, 354 U.S. 1, at pg 17. This case involved the question: Does the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (treaty) supersede the U.S. Constitution? Keep reading. The Reid Court (U.S. Supreme Court) held in their Opinion that, "... No agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or any other branch of government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution. Article VI, the Supremacy clause of the Constitution declares, "This Constitution and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all the Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land..."There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification which even suggest such a result..."It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power UNDER an international agreement, without observing constitutional prohibitions. (See: Elliots Debates 1836 ed. pgs 500-519)."In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and Senate combined. "Did you understand what the Supreme Court said here? No Executive Order, Presidential Directive, Executive Agreement, no NAFTA, GATT/WTO agreement/treaty, passed by ANYONE, can supersede the Constitution. FACT. No question! At this point the Court paused to quote from another of their Opinions; Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258 at pg. 267 where the Court held at that time that, "The treaty power as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government, or a change in the character of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter without its consent." Assessing the GATT/WTO parasitic organism in light of this part of the Opinion, we see that it cannot attach itself to its host (our Republic or States) in the fashion the traitors in our government wish, without our acquiescing to it. The Reid Court continues with its Opinion:"This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which MUST comply with the Constitution, is on full parity with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict, renders the treaty null. It would be completely anomalous to say that a treaty need not comply with the Constitution when such an agreement can be overridden by a statute that must conform to that instrument." The U.S. Supreme court could not have made it more clear : TREATIES DO NOT OVERRIDE THE CONSTITUTION, AND CANNOT, IN ANY FASHION, AMEND IT!!! CASE CLOSED.

This one is somewhat more unfocused and rambling than most wingnuttery, but you can look forward to it being cited for why the proposed AWB won't pass Constitutional muster.

I've posted this as it was posted on my news feed. You might want to try to break it into paragraphs (or faciimiles thereof) if you want to make heads or tails of this nonsense.

[Buzz Clik]

1. Loons.

My daughter's "pinkie promise" makes more sense.

[Drale]

2. Wait so it "can't be repealed"

I think prohibition would have something to say about that, anything can be repealed with the right number of votes.

[xfundy]

3. If it started recently, it probably came from a fax/email blast

from NRA to Fox Noise, Rush, etc.

Viewers/listeners of that crap always have an "AHA!" moment and open their sewers simultaneously.

[OmahaBlueDog]

7. If you google "Dick Act 1902" you'll see this is making the rounds on every wingnut blog

Meanwhile, in a saner place...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Act_of_1903

The Militia Act of 1903 (32 Stat. 775), also known as the Dick Act, was initiated by United States Secretary of War Elihu Root following the Spanish–American War of 1898, after the war demonstrated weaknesses in the militia, and in the entire U.S. military. The act formulated the concept of the National Guard and also ensured that all state military forces were simultaneously dual reservists under the authority of the Army Reserve. This last measure was to prevent state governors from using National Guard forces as "private armies", in many ways as had been done in the American Civil War and to ensure that the President could, at any time, mobilize state military forces into the federal armed forces.

U.S. Senator Charles W. F. Dick, a Major General in the Ohio National Guard and the chair of the Committee on the Militia,[1] sponsored the 1903 Act towards the end of the 57th U.S. Congress. Under this legislation, passed January 21, 1903, the organized militia of the States were given federal status to the militia, and required to conform to Regular Army organization within five years. The act also required National Guard units to attend 24 drills and five days annual training a year, and, for the first time, provided for pay for annual training. In return for the increased Federal funding which the act made available, militia units were subject to inspection by Regular Army officers, and had to meet certain standards.

The increase in Federal funding was an important development. In 1808 Congress had allocated $200,000 a year to arm the militia; by 1887, the figure had risen to only $400,000. But in 1906, three years after the passage of the Dick Act, $2,000,000 was allocated to arm the militia; between 1903 and 1916, the Federal government spent $53,000,000 on the Guard, more than the total of the previous hundred years.

With the increase in Federal funding came an increase in paperwork and bureaucracy. Before the passage of the Dick Act, militia affairs had been handled by the various bureaus of the War Department, as the subject dictated. But the 1903 act authorized, for the first time, the creation of a separate section responsible for National Guard affairs. Located in the Miscellaneous Division of the Adjutant General's office, this small section, headed by Major James Parker, Cavalry, with four clerks, was the predecessor of today's National Guard Bureau.

[unblock]

4. i guess the idea is you can't amend it if it's all one paragraph?

[MADem]

5. OK, the title of this act alone will no doubt cause a great deal of childish mirth in some quarters.

That said, any act of Congress can be repealed by Congress.

The Supreme Court can, and has on occasion, found some acts passed by Congress unconstitutional.

I couldn't get through that load of garbage, it is a "too long/didn't read" thing--and I'm betting the wingnuts count on that. However, when anything winds up with an all caps diatribe and multiple exclamation points followed by "CASE CLOSED" one can figure it's anything but!

[Curmudgeoness]

8. How stupid are these people!

It is just an "act". It isn't even an amendment to the Constitution. Jeez, how many laws have been thrown out, changed, or superceded? This makes it sound as if any law ever passed has to stay on the books for eternity.

I think that means women probably are not allowed to wear a skirt that shows their ankles.

[Bay Boy]

9. It's the equivalent of:

double secret probation