ARTICLES
The Rewrite = Higher Taxes
A New Constitution Could Be Dangerous
Bedford's Constitution Is A Lawyer's Prayer Book
Bedford's new constitution would read like 'lawyer's prayer book'
Sen. Roger Bedford, D-Russsellville, is a lawyer among many, in the Alabama Legislature. Bedford was recently defeated in his ill-fated attempt to fix the Alabama Constitutional rewrite to insure dominance by an extremely powerful lawyer's monopoly. Few Alabamians realize the power and control the lawyer's monopoly has over politics and the laws of the land including everything from taxes to human rights.
The latter category disturbs me most. Lawyers want total control, similar to the control wielded upon the colonies by England's King George in 1776 - the same tyrannical control whose final result was America's war for independence. Under King George, human rights were non-existent and the present day lawyer's monopoly follows a strikingly similar design and purpose.
Bedford's proposal, if approved by the Legislature, would have given lawmakers (lawyers) the authority to rewrite the entire constitution at once. What's wrong with Bedford's seeming innocent proposal? Some call his actions tyranny and a gross usurping of power.
Our founding fathers wrote the original constitution with the people's rights in mind. However, over the last 200 years, lawyers have, by dominating the legislature, single-handedly rewritten and transformed the original constitution into oblivion.
For example the original constitution provided for special courts to handle disputes between the people and the state. One man, a lawyer and attorney general, single-handedly rewrote the constitution to eliminate the special courts and further declared that the state cannot be made a defendant in any case. Today, if the state owes its citizens money - too bad - the citizen has no options and no avenue to address his problem before the state's lawyers. Who, among us, can forget the exorbitant and outrageous pay raises the lawyer-legislators voted judges recently?
One concept the people must not forget is that judges are always lawyers and lawyers are judges wannabe. What is wrong with lawyers writing the law and also interpreting and enforcing the law? The answer is obvious. When the illegal lawyers monopoly write the law, the law ultimately reads like a lawyer's prayer book. The next step removes the "same hands rule" and allows the same individual that wrote the law to also interpret and enforce the law. Hence a dictator is born and the government becomes a nation of man and not of laws, far removed from the intent of the original constitution.
James Madison, the chief framer of the Constitution of the United States, stated: "Where the whole power of one department is exercised by the same hands which possess the whole power of another department, the fundamental principles of a free constitution are subverted." The people must get lawyers out of the legislature and most certainly must get lawyers out of the constitution's rewrite process.
James R. Blackston
Jasper, Ala