Nothing that happened on January 6th came remotely close to threatening our constitutional order, or preventing Joe Biden from taking office. People who claim otherwise are lying.
politicrossing.com
January 15, 2022
By
Alan Rugger
Tucker questions calling the people involved on January 6th “terrorists” when they were largely unarmed and, as far as they knew, abiding by the law. Highlights include:
“Nothing that happened on January 6th came remotely close to threatening our constitutional order, or from preventing Joe Biden from taking office. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying and should be forced to explain specifically how the mechanics of democracy were imperiled that day. But they never explain, they just yell louder and then they issue more indictments.”
“Where exactly is all this criminal white supremacy, this right-wing domestic terrorism that poses ‘the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland’? Where is it? It doesn’t exist.”
“Many thousands of Americans are killed each year by violence, they’re murdered, but conservatives are not the ones who are murdering them. Look it up, it’s a ludicrous lie.”
“Many of the rioters were expecting war … really, were they? Then, why didn’t they bring guns to the war? The indictment doesn’t explain that. In fact, it tells us that as January 6th approached, these ‘dangerous conspirators’ who were anticipating war agreed not to bring firearms into the District of Columbia.”
“The whole point of this exercise is to redefine any opposition to the democratic party as domestic terrorism as they face defeat in the midterm election.”
“So, how do the rest of us respond as the US government redefines people who disagree with their political beliefs as terrorists? Well, there’s really only one way and it’s a nonviolent way, it’s the essential way. Refuse to play along. Don’t pretend they’re sincere, they’re not sincere. Tell the truth. Call authoritarianism what it is.”
New War On Terror 18:09 min
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[COMMENT:
Star Chamber
The term star chamber refers pejoratively to any secret meeting held by a judicial body. The First Amendment supports the right of the public to attend criminal trials.
mtsu.edu
Star Chamber
By Martin Gruberg 2009
A document of 1504 showing King Henry VII sitting in the Star Chamber. Star chambers, named after the room in which the court met in Westminster Palace, had their origins in England where they were used to try people too powerful to be brought before oridinary common law courts.
Their jurisdiction included forgery, perjury, riots, libel and conspiracy. Parliament abolished them in 1641.
The term star chamber refers pejoratively to any secret or closed meeting held by a judicial or executive body, or to a court proceeding that seems grossly unfair or that is used to persecute an individual.
In
Richmond Newspapers Inc. v. Virginia (1980), the Supreme Court cited the First Amendment to support the right of the public and members of the news media to
attend criminal trials.
Star Chamber originated in England as a separate court under the king
The Star Chamber has its origins in the English institution of the same name that tried people too powerful to be brought before the ordinary common-law courts; the fear was corruption.
From the Middle Ages, the Star Chamber consisted of a committee of the English king’s council.
It was reorganized in 1487 under King Henry VII, so that it was composed of four high officers of state, with the power to add to their number a bishop, a temporal lord of the council, and two justices of the court of Westminster. Henry VIII’s chancellor and cardinal Thomas Wolsey encouraged plaintiffs to appeal first to the Star Chamber before filing in the ordinary courts.
Star Chamber used in libel, perjury, conspiracy cases
The
jurisdiction of the Star Chamber included forgery, perjury, riots, maintenance, fraud, libel, and conspiracy. It could impose fines, whipping, the pillory, prison sentences, and mutilation, but it could not impose the death penalty. The Star Chamber received its name from the room in which it met in Westminster Palace — a room in which stars were painted on the ceiling.
At first, the court was popular for protecting ordinary people from their oppressors. But eventually it abused its powers, using torture to obtain confessions. Jurors were punished for finding verdicts against the Crown.
Parliament abolished the Star Chamber in 1641 after abuses of power
King Charles I used the Star Chamber to crush opposition to his policies. In 1641 the Long Parliament abolished the court.
In
People v. Croswell (N.Y.1804), Justice James Kent dismissed numerous English precedents from the Star Chamber in presenting his view that laws against
seditious libel should allow jurors to make decisions about matters of both law and fact and allow defendants to plead truth as a defense.
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Learn about the text, history, and meaning of the U.S. Constitution from leading scholars of diverse legal and philosophical perspectives.
constitutioncenter.org
- January 22, 2021
- by Scott Bomboy
A Look Back: Sedition, Free Speech and the President
In today’s political climate, the words “sedition” and “censorship” are being tossed around in public discussions about the Capitol riot and reactions to it. But in constitutional terms, these types of debates happened in the Founders’ time—and were epitomized in incidents such as one involving congressman and publisher Matthew Lyon.
In October 1799, President John Adams and the Federalists jailed the Vermont publisher, Lyon, for criticizing Adams in print and in front of crowds. Lyon also was a sitting member of the House of Representatives when put on trial.
The Adams administration charged Lyon under
the 1798 Sedition Act, one of the most controversial laws in American history. To Adams’ supporters, Lyon committed a heinous crime: He wrote President Adams had “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.” Lyon also published a letter from poet Joel Barlow that criticized Adams, and Lyon read the letter aloud at his campaign rallies.
The Sedition Act, passed a year before Lyons was jailed, specifically targeted Adams’ opponents, the Jeffersonian Republicans, to suppress dissent and criticism of the government at a time when war with France seemed possible and Adams’ re-election was unsure. The act punished the “writing, printing, uttering or publishing [of] any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings about the government of the United States” with fines and jail. At the time, political speech like Lyon’s was not considered protected under the First Amendment by the Adams administration, and his newspaper did not enjoy similar protections if it criticized President Adams.
Among the critics of the law were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who anonymously wrote the
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions declaring the act as unconstitutional. Madison said the act “ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.”
Lyon’s prior behavior expressing his views didn’t help matters. The Vermonter started a fight in the House in January 1798 during the William Blount impeachment proceedings when he made light of Connecticut’s Federalists. Roger Griswold of that state objected, pointing out Lyon’s dishonorable discharge from the Continental Army. Lyon responded by spitting tobacco juice on Griswold, forever gaining the nickname “the Spitting Lyon.”
Motions to censure or expel Lyon failed. Despite Lyon’s apology, Griswold attacked Lyon shortly after on the House floor, striking Lyon repeatedly with a walking stick. Lyon grabbed a set of fireplace tongs, and lunged at Griswold. Other House members subdued them.
The fight became a sensation in an era when newspapers openly supported political parties.
And soon Lyon would be on the attack in his newly titled newspaper,
The Scourge of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth.
A private letter written by Lyon before the Sedition Act passed played a part in his imprisonment after
Spooner’s Vermont Journal published it. Joel Barlow’s letter to his brother-in-law, Founder Abraham Baldwin, said President Adams should be sent to a “madhouse.”
Lyon faced three charges under the Sedition Act and he represented himself in front of Associate Justice William Paterson, a Federalist, in Rutland, Vermont. The district attorney
charged Lyon with the “intent and design” to stir up sedition in the United States by defaming the federal government. Lyon argued one charge was unconstitutional because his letter was written
before the Sedition Act was passed. He claimed the Sedition Act was illegal because states had jurisdiction over libel laws. In a long concluding statement, Lyon said Barlow’s letter was printed in his own newspaper without his permission, and many of the statements made were true. Lyon also objected on grounds the free press could present “legitimate opposition” to the government.
Paterson instructed the jury, gathered from Federalist towns in Vermont, to ignore the constitutional issues, including Lyon’s political speeches, and decide if Lyon’s actions were intended to bring Adams and the government “into disrepute.” The jury found Lyon guilty on all charges and Paterson sentenced Lyon to four months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Undeterred, Lyon ran his congressional campaign from jail, winning election by a landslide as a Jeffersonian Republican martyred by the Sedition Act. In all, more than two dozen people, mostly opposition publishers, were convicted under the 1798 Sedition Act. The act, which was unpopular, expired when Adams left office in 1801 and it was considered one of the reasons for Jefferson’s victory over Adams in the 1800 presidential election.
Ironically, in the 1801 runoff House election between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, a critical vote fell to the Vermont delegation on the 36th ballot. When Lewis Morris declined to vote, one of deciding votes for Jefferson was cast by Vermont’s other representative: Matthew Lyon.
More than 100 years later, President Woodrow Wilson pressed in 1918 for a second Sedition Act during World War I as an amendment to the Espionage Act. The amended language made it a crime to “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane . . . or abusive language” about the United States government or to disagree with its actions overseas. Nearly 900 people were convicted under the act and related laws in 1919 and 1920 before the Harding administration repealed it.
The second Sedition Act was twice tested in the Supreme Court. In
Abrams v. United States (1919), a majority of the Court upheld the act, but Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissented, with Justice Louis Brandeis agreeing with Holmes. “I had conceived that the United States, through many years, had shown its repentance for the Sedition Act of 1798, by repaying fines that it imposed,” Holmes wrote.
In 1964, the Supreme Court considered another landmark case,
New York Times v. Sullivan, that also involved the defamation of a government figure. Justice William Brennan in his majority opinion said that government officials couldn’t sue for damages when criticized by the press unless a standard of “actual malice” was met. As part of that opinion, Brennan offered a sharp critique of the Sedition Act of 1798. Brennan concluded that, “although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history.”
In a later Supreme Court decision,
Watts v. United States, Justice William Douglas came to the same conclusion. The Court decided, without even hearing arguments, that a man who made a hyperbolic threat against President Lyndon Johnson didn’t violate federal law. “The Alien and Sedition Laws constituted one of our sorriest chapters; and I had thought we had done with them forever,” Douglas remarked.
Scott Bomboy is editor and chief of the National Constitution Center.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
