Thursday, April 30, 2015

More fatal earthquakes to come, warn geologists

More fatal earthquakes to come, warn geologists


More fatal earthquakes to come, warn geologists

An injured person in helped to a landing area to be loaded onto a rescue helicopter at Everest Base Camp a day after an avalanche triggered by a huge earthquake devastated the camp. The bodies of those who perished lie under orange tents, April 26, 2015.

The untold – and terrifying – story behind the earthquake that devastated Nepal last Saturday morning begins with something that sounds quite benign. It's the ebb and flow of rainwater in the great river deltas of India and Bangladesh, and the pressure that puts on the grinding plates that make up the surface of the planet.
Recently discovered, that causal factor is seen by a growing body of scientists as further proof that climate change can affect the underlying structure of the Earth.
Because of this understanding, a series of life-threatening "extreme geological events" – earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis – is predicted by a group of eminent geologists and geophysicists including University College London's Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards.
"Climate change may play a critical role in triggering certain faults in certain places where they could kill a hell of a lot of people," says Professor McGuire. Some of his colleagues suspect the process may already have started.
It sounds like a pitch for a Hollywood apocalypse-fest – indeed the movie 2012 featured the Earth's crust collapsing after a rapid heating of the Earth's core. The mechanism here is rather more mundane, though potentially no less devastating.
Evidence from the end of the last Ice Age has already shown that the planet's uneasy web of seismic faults – cracks in the crust like the one that runs along the Himalayas – are very sensitive to the small pressure changes brought by change in the climate. And a sensitive volcano or seismic faultline is a very dangerous one.
The disappearing ice, sea-level rise and floods already forecast for the 21st century are inevitable as the earth warms and weather patterns change – and they will shift the weight on the planet. Professor McGuire calls this process "waking the giant" – something that can be done with just a few gigatonnes of water in the right – or wrong – place.
"These stress or strain variations – just the pressure of a handshake in geological terms – are perfectly capable of triggering a quake if that fault is ready to go," he tells Newsweek.
Devastation city: people free a man from the rubble of a destroyed building in Kathmandu.
Any schoolchild geographer knows the underlying cause of earthquakes like that in Nepal: it is the uneasy grinding of the continent-sized plates that float over the Earth's molten core. This process that went into overdrive when the ice sheets started withdrawing 20,000 years ago, destablising the "mantle". The latest event in that endless process came just before midday local time on the 25 April, when the section that holds up India slipped under the Eurasian plate.
The effects were immediate and horrific – buildings collapsed over the region, leaving nearly 4,000 dead and many more injured. As Newsweek went to press, huge aftershocks were causing more chaos.
But the quake was widely predicted. The Himalayas themselves are the collateral damage of the endless shoving match between the two parts of the Asian continent. Earthquakes in Nepal have been charted for at least 700 years, and this one was an almost exact repeat of a 1934 event that killed 16,000 people in Nepal and northern India. Mahatma Gandhi, after visiting the stricken communities, said it was a providential punishment on Indians for failing to do away with the caste system.
What neither Gandhi nor 1930s scientists knew was that the rain that fills the huge rivers that rise in the Himalayas and run down to the Sea of Bengal is a crucial part of this process. Dr Pierre Bettinelli was the scientist who in 2007 first showed how this vast flush of rainwater, second only to that of the Amazon basin, affects earthquakes in the Himalayas. He spoke to Newsweek from a base in the Algerian desert where he is researching the effects of oil-well drilling – another man-made cause of earthquake.
"Imagine a piece of wood on water – that's the Indian plate – push down on it with your foot and you create compression, disturbance, in the water beside it. That you see in the increased number of seismic events at the edge of the plate."
The Himalayas bordering Nepal are the result of an endless shoving match between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, a natural phenomenon which can have devastating consequences.
With this insight – which has been generally accepted by scientists in the field – Bettinelli explained the seasonal differences in occurrence of earthquakes in the Himalayas. Quite simply, the coming and going of the weight of the monsoon rains was causing energy to build up at the edge of the plate.
"This effect could certainly have made the Nepal earthquake come sooner," says Professor Roland Burgmann, of the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Meanwhile, of course, climate change has been shown to be causing enormous and disturbing changes in the size and shape of the South Asian monsoon, while human tampering has played a part in floods.
UCL's Professor Bill McGuire has few doubts that recently discovered effects like this warn of catastrophe. In a recent book, Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes, he ponders the effects of the 100m rise of sea-levels that's threatened should all the remaining ice on the planet melt.
That clearly makes the 150 gigatonnes of extra water that collects in Bangladesh after a heavy monsoon season, tilting the Indian plate, no more than a literal drop in the ocean.
"Across the world," McGuire writes, "as sea levels climb remorselessly, the load-related bending of the crust around the margins of the ocean basins might – in time – act to sufficiently 'unclamp' coastal faults such as California's San Andreas, allowing them to move more easily; at the same time acting to squeeze magma out of susceptible volcanoes that are primed and ready to blow."
Of course, that may be some centuries or even millennia away. Even the worst-case scenarios predicted for the 21st century imagine sea-level rises of no more than five metres. But already McGuire and colleagues have seen the effects of quite small sea-level rise on one of Alaska's faults.
"There's a volcano in Alaska, Pavlov, that only erupts during the autumn and winter. The 10cm or 15cm rise in sea level during the winter months, when low pressure comes over, is enough to bend the crust and squeeze magma out. That's an example of how tiny a change you need," he said.
Meanwhile, geologists modelling the effect of retreating ice sheets in the northern hemisphere predict more volcanic activity as pressure is released on fault lines. McGuire points to three eruptions in five years in Iceland – "You can't say that's statistical proof but … it makes you think."
Residents and soldiers inspect debris of destroyed buildings in Kathmandu after the 7.8-magnitude quake struck Nepal's capital, killing thousands and causing widespread damage.
For Europeans and North Americans, these volcanoes are far off. But the collapse of coastal ones would be likely to trigger tsunamis, causing devastation all around the North Atlantic.
Some of McGuire's colleagues believe he overstates the earthquake risk of sea-level rise and changing rainfall. There is just not enough data yet to prove the hypothesis, says Professor Burgmann. But he is convinced Maguire is right when he talks about volcanic eruptions.
"Ice unloading at the end of the ice ages produced a flurry of volcanic eruptions. That makes sense to me – it's very true that if you take pressure off a magmatic system that can activate eruptions. There's solid evidence of that in Iceland."
What can we do? McGuire thinks there's little, other than mapping the "coiled spring" that is the world's seismic faults with an eye to where climate and sea-level change may trigger events. Then, you can only prepare people for the earth's grumblings, from California to the Canary Islands to Nepal.
"There are geological systems all around the planet with unstable volcanoes that are susceptible: when it comes to risk, I'm afraid there's a very, very long list."

"The Lid": Scientific Malfeasance-->Newsweek Blames Nepal Earthquake On Climate Change

"The Lid": Scientific Malfeasance-->Newsweek Blames Nepal Earthquake On Climate Change 

Scientific Malfeasance-->Newsweek Blames Nepal Earthquake On Climate Change

This story on Newsweek.com was published a month late, it would have been much more appropriate for April 1st rather than the 28th.  Sadly it wasn't meant as a joke the piece in Newsweek claims that the horrific earthquake in Nepal that took at least 5,000 lives was caused by climate change.
The untold – and terrifying – story behind the earthquake that devastated Nepal last Saturday morning begins with something that sounds quite benign. It’s the ebb and flow of rainwater in the great river deltas of India and Bangladesh, and the pressure that puts on the grinding plates that make up the surface of the planet.

Recently discovered, that causal factor is seen by a growing body of scientists as further proof that climate change can affect the underlying structure of the Earth.
Yep, the Earth hasn't seen warming since December 1996 which means our mother planet waited 18 years and 4 months to geologically complain that it was too hot?



Because of this understanding, a series of life-threatening “extreme geological events” – earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis – is predicted by a group of eminent geologists and geophysicists including University College London’s Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards.
“Climate change may play a critical role in triggering certain faults in certain places where they could kill a hell of a lot of people,” says Professor McGuire. Some of his colleagues suspect the process may already have started.
What Newsweek doesn't explain is why the same thing didn't happen during the Roman Warming Period (approximately 250 BCE-400 CE) and the Medieval Warming Period (approximately 900 CE-1300 CE) when temperatures were as warm or even warmer than they are today.

An honest scientist would explain that the tragedy in Nepal, indeed the entire Himalayan Mountain chain was caused by two of the Earth's tectonic plates crashing against each other. A few hundred-million years in the future all of the earth's plates will have moved together forming a brand new supercontinent.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that devastated Nepal at the weekend is a stark reminder that the Earth-moving forces that shape continents are as active today as they were 4.5 billion years ago when our planet was in the throes of being formed.

"We were near the quake's epicentre the day before it happened – and were near the epicentre of a major aftershock the day after," says Curtin University geologist Zheng-Xiang Li, speaking from Lhasa. "We were here to study how the India-Eurasian collision had driven the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and the rise of the Himalayas."


From the looks of it, the super continent seems like a good thing, at the very least it will cut down flight times and for those who like to go on cruises, Atlantic trips will be much longer.
The evidence is compelling: GPS measurements show that the Atlantic Ocean is widening by a few centimetres a year. The Pacific Ocean, on the other hand, is narrowing at a similar rate.

"If this trend continues, within the next one or two hundred million years, the Pacific will have closed up – resulting in a collision between the American and the Eurasian continents," Professor Li notes. "Australia, meanwhile, is set to join Amasia – in that we're slowly but surely shifting by about seven centimetres a year towards Asia.
How ridiculous is the Newsweek claim?  Well Steve Goddard who runs the Real Science blog (one of the best Global Warming sites) didn't even try to argue against it--he just made it the subject of ridicule:




The argument that the horrific Earthquake in Nepal was caused by anything but plate tectonics is not only nonsense but it is fear mongering rather than scientific exploration which should be a search for the truth. It's a shame that some would exploit the Nepal tragedy to promote additional fear.

An Ironic Drought In California - Victor Davis Hanson

An Ironic Drought In California 

Victor Davis Hanson


. The present four-year California drought is not novel -- even if President Barack Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells -- like those of 1929-34, 1976-77 and 1987-92 -- more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures.
What is new is that the state has never had 40 million residents during a drought -- well over 10 million more than during the last dry spell in the early 1990s. Much of the growth is due to massive and recent immigration.
A record one in four current Californians was not born in the United States, according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. Whatever one's view on immigration, it is ironic to encourage millions of newcomers to settle in the state without first making commensurately liberal investments for them in water supplies and infrastructure.
Sharp rises in population still would not have mattered much had state authorities just followed their forbearers' advice to continually increase water storage.
Environmentalists counter that existing dams and reservoirs have already tapped out the state's potential to transfer water from the wet areas, where 75 percent of the snow and rain fall, to the dry regions, where 75 percent of the population prefers to reside.
But that analysis is incomplete.
After the initial phases of the federal Central Valley Project and state California Water Project were largely finished -- and flooding was no longer considered a dire threat in Northern California -- environmentalists in the last 40 years canceled most of the major second- and third-stage storage projects. To take a few examples, they stopped the raising of Shasta Dam, the construction of the Peripheral Canal, and gargantuan projects such as the Ah Pah and Dos Rios reservoirs.
Those were certainly massive, disruptive and controversial projects with plenty of downsides -- and once considered unnecessary in an earlier, much smaller California. But no one denies now that they would have added millions of acre-feet of water for 40 million people.
Lower foothill dams such as the proposed Sites, Los Banos and Temperance Flat dams in wet years would have banked millions of acre-feet as insurance for dry years. All such reservoirs were also canceled.
Yet a single 1 million acre-foot reservoir can usually be built as cheaply as a desalinization plant. It requires a fraction of desalinization's daily energy use, leaves a much smaller carbon footprint, and provides almost 20 times as much as water. California could have built perhaps 40-50 such subsidiary reservoirs for the projected $68 billion cost of the proposed high-speed rail project.
California's dams and reservoirs were originally intended to meet four objectives: flood control, agricultural irrigation, recreation and hydroelectric generation. The inevitable results of sustaining a large population and vibrant economy were dry summer rivers in the lowlands and far less water reaching the San Francisco Bay and delta regions.
Yet state planners once accepted those unfortunate tradeoffs. They would never have envisioned in a state of 40 million using the reservoirs in a drought to release water year-round for environmental objectives such as aiding the delta smelt or reintroducing salmon in the San Joaquin River watershed.
No one knows the exact figures on how many million acre-feet of water have been sent to the ocean since the beginning of the drought. Most agree that several million acre-feet slated for households or farming went out to sea.
There is more irony in opposing the construction of man-made and unnatural reservoirs, only to assume that such existing storage water should be tapped to ensure constant, year-round river flows. Before the age of reservoir construction, when rivers sometimes naturally dried up, such an environmental luxury may have impossible during dry years.
Agriculture is blamed for supposedly using 80 percent of California's storage water and providing less than 5 percent of the state's GDP in return. But farming actually uses only about 40 percent of the state's currently available water. Agriculture's contribution to the state's GDP cannot be calibrated just by the sale value of its crops, but more accurately by thousands of subsidiary and spin-off industries such as fuel, machinery, food markets and restaurants that depend on the state's safe, reliable and relatively inexpensive food.
The recent rise of Silicon Valley has brought in more billions of dollars in revenue than century-old farming, but so far, no one has discovered how to eat a Facebook page or drink a Google search.
Stanford University, Hollywood and Silicon Valley do not sit on natural aquifers sufficient to support surrounding populations. Only privileged water claims on transfers from Yosemite National Park, the Central Sierra Nevada Mountains, Northern California or the Colorado River allow these near-desert areas along the coastal corridor to support some 20 million residents. Much of their imported water is used only once, not recycled and sent out to sea.
A final irony is that the beneficiaries of these man-made canals and dams neither allowed more water storage for others nor are willing to divert their own privileged water transfers to facilitate their own dreams of fish restoration. Nature may soon get back to normal -- but will California?

Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says

Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says 


Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says

April 29 at 9:10 PM
A prisoner sharing a police transport van with Freddie Gray told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post.
The prisoner, who is currently in jail, was separated from Gray by a metal partition and could not see him. His statement is contained in an application for a search warrant, which is sealed by the court. The Post was given the document under the condition that the prisoner not be named because the person who provided it feared for the inmate’s safety.
The document, written by a Baltimore police investigator, offers the first glimpse of what might have happened inside the van. It is not clear whether any additional evidence backs up the prisoner’s version, which is just one piece of a much larger probe.
Gray was found unconscious in the wagon when it arrived at a police station on April 12. The 25-year-old had suffered a spinal injury and died a week later, touching off waves of protests across Baltimore, capped by a riot Monday in which hundreds of angry residents torched buildings, looted stores and pelted police officers with rocks.
Who was Baltimore’s Freddie Gray?(1:27)
The death of 25-year-old Baltimore resident Freddie Gray is sparking demonstrations and riots in the city. Take a look at Gray’s past and the video that shows his arrest just days before his death. (The Washington Post)
Police have said they do not know whether Gray was injured during the arrest or during his 30-minute ride in the van. Local police and the U.S. Justice Department both have launched investigations of Gray’s death.
Jason Downs, one of the attorneys for the Gray family, said the family had not been told of the prisoner’s comments to investigators.
“We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord,” Downs said. “We question the accuracy of the police reports we’ve seen thus far, including the police report that says Mr. Gray was arrested without force or incident.”
Baltimore police said they will wrap up their investigation Friday and turn the results over to the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office, which will decide whether to seek an indictment. Six police officers, including a lieutenant and a sergeant, have been suspended.
Capt. Eric Kowalczyk, chief spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department, declined to comment on the affidavit, citing the ongoing investigation. The person who provided the document did so on condition of anonymity.
The affidavit is part of a search warrant seeking the seizure of the uniform worn by one of the officers involved in Gray’s arrest or transport. It does not say how many officers were in the van, whether any reported that they heard banging or whether they would have been able to help Gray if he was seeking to injure himself. Police have mentioned only two prisoners in the van.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts has admitted flaws in the way officers handled Gray after they chased him through a West Baltimore housing project and arrested him. They said they later found a switchblade clipped to the inside of his pants. Batts has said officers repeatedly ignored Gray’s pleas for medical help and failed to secure him with a safety belt or harness in the back of the transport van.
Video shot by several bystanders has fueled the rage in West Baltimore. It shows two officers on top of Gray, putting their knees in his back, then dragging his seemingly limp body to the van as he cries out.
Batts has said Gray stood on one leg and climbed into the van on his own.
The van driver stopped three times while transporting Gray to a booking center, the first to put him in leg irons. Batts said the officer driving the van described Gray as “irate.” The search warrant application says Gray “continued to be combative in the police wagon.”
The driver made a second stop, five minutes later, and asked an officer to help check on Gray. At that stop, police have said the van driver found Gray on the floor of the van and put him back on the seat, still without restraints. Police said Gray asked for medical help at that point.
The third stop was to put the other prisoner — a 38-year-old man accused of violating a protective order — into the van. The van was then driven six blocks to the Western District station. Gray was taken from there to a hospital, where he died April 19.
The prisoner, who is in jail, could not be reached for comment. No one answered the phone at his house, and an attorney was not listed in court records.
Batts has said officers violated policy by failing to properly restrain Gray. But the president of the Baltimore police union noted that the policy mandating seat belts took effect April 3 and was e-mailed to officers as part of a package of five policy changes on April 9, three days before Gray was arrested.
Gene Ryan, the police union president, said many officers aren’t reading the new policies — updated to meet new national standards — because they think they’re the same rules they already know, with cosmetic changes. The updates are supposed to be read out during pre-shift meetings.
The previous policy was written in 1997, when the department used smaller, boxier wagons that officers called “ice cream trucks.” They originally had a metal bar that prisoners had to hold during the ride. Seat belts were added later, but the policy made their use discretionary.
Ryan said that until all facts become clear, he “urged everyone not to rush to judgment. The facts as presented will speak for themselves. I just wish everyone would take a step back and a deep breath, and let the investigation unfold.”
The search warrant application says that detectives at the time did not know where the officer’s uniform was located and that they wanted his department-issued long-sleeve shirts, pants and black boots or shoes. The document says investigators think that Gray’s DNA might be found on the officer’s clothes.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Idaho bill would require students to read 'Atlas Shrugged'

Idaho bill would require students to read 'Atlas Shrugged' 

Idaho bill would require students to read 'Atlas Shrugged'

rand660.jpg
State Sen. John Goedde introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require Idaho secondary students to read and pass an examination on "Atlas Shrugged," the iconic 1957 novel by Ayn Rand, above, touted by conservatives like Rep. Paul Ryan and commentator Rush Limbaugh. (The Ayn Rand Institute)
In a symbolic move to teach “personal responsibility,” an Idaho lawmaker has proposed requiring every high school student in the state to read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”
State Sen. John Goedde introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require Idaho secondary students to read and pass an examination on the iconic 1957 novel touted by conservatives like Rep. Paul Ryan and Rush Limbaugh.
The lawmaker, though, says the bill is meant more as a statement than an actual proposed policy. Goedde, in a statement to FoxNews.com, said media outlets have thus far “totally missed the point” of the bill — he described the bill as a protest to a state Board of Education decision to roll back online class requirements.
“Traditionally in Idaho, the State Board of Education sets graduation requirements in rule,” Goedde wrote in an email Thursday. “They recently repealed a rule dealing with online class requirements and failed to move another rule forward dealing with administrators demonstrating proficiency in evaluating teachers. I felt both were important and wanted to remind them that the legislature could also set graduation standards.”
“I have no intention of pursuing this requirement. I am sorry but I don’t see a story here.”
- State Sen. John Goedde
The “Atlas Shrugged” requirement, Goedde said, was simply a vehicle to deliver that message. He said he has "no intention" of establishing this requirement.
Still, the bill was formally introduced Tuesday.
The bill reads: “The student shall obtain a passing grade on the examination in order to satisfy the graduation requirement provided for in this section. Such examination shall be approved by the state department of education.”
When asked by state Sen. Bob Nonini why he chose that particular book, Goedde reportedly replied to laughter before the state’s Senate Education Committee: “That book made my son a Republican.”
Goedde told The Spokesman-Review the legislation was merely a “shot over their bow” to indicate other ways to adopt high school graduation requirements.
The book — Rand’s fourth and final novel — is touted as her masterwork and explores her “unique vision of existence and of man’s highest purpose and potential in life,” according to the California-based Ayn Rand Institute (ARI).
Yaron Brook, ARI's executive director, said it's not the job of lawmakers to dictate what high school students read.
"However, every student in America would benefit from reading Atlas Shrugged," Brook said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "Not only does the book explain, in economic, political and philosophical terms, the challenges facing this country, but it also shows what's required to restore the ideals of the Founding Fathers. Atlas Shrugged is not a Republican or conservative book, but an American book: a hymn to the ideals of individualism, capitalism, and the free human mind."

The History and Danger of Administrative Law | Imprimis

The History and Danger of Administrative Law | Imprimis

The History and Danger of Administrative Law

September 2014 | Volume 43, Number 9
Philip Hamburger
Columbia Law School

Philip HamburgerPhilip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He received his B.A. from Princeton University and his J.D. from Yale Law School. He has also taught at the University of Chicago Law School, the George Washington University Law School, the University of Virginia Law School, and Northwestern Law School. A contributor to National Review Online, he has written for several law reviews and journals, including the American Journal of Legal History, the Supreme Court Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Journal of Law and Politics. He is the author of Separation of Church and State, Law and Judicial Duty, and, most recently, Is Administrative Law Unlawful?

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on May 6, 2014, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series. 
There are many complaints about administrative law—including that it is arbitrary, that it is a burden on the economy, and that it is an intrusion on freedom. The question I will address here is whether administrative law is unlawful, and I will focus on constitutional history. Those who forget history, it is often said, are doomed to repeat it. And this is what has happened in the United States with the rise of administrative law—or, more accurately, administrative power.
Administrative law is commonly defended as a new sort of power, a product of the 19th and the 20th centuries that developed to deal with the problems of modern society in all its complexity. From this perspective, the Framers of the Constitution could not have anticipated it and the Constitution could not have barred it. What I will suggest, in contrast, is that administrative power is actually very old. It revives what used to be called prerogative or absolute power, and it is thus something that the Constitution centrally prohibited.
But first, what exactly do I mean by administrative law or administrative power? Put simply, administrative acts are binding or constraining edicts that come, not through law, but through other mechanisms or pathways. For example, when an executive agency issues a rule constraining Americans—barring an activity that results in pollution, for instance, or restricting how citizens can use their land—it is an attempt to exercise binding legislative power not through an act of Congress, but through an administrative edict. Similarly, when an executive agency adjudicates a violation of one of these edicts—in order to impose a fine or some other penalty—it is an attempt to exercise binding judicial power not through a judicial act, but again through an administrative act.
In a way we can think of administrative law as a form of off-road driving. The Constitution offers two avenues of binding power—acts of Congress and acts of the courts. Administrative acts by executive agencies are a way of driving off-road, exercising power through other pathways. For those in the driver’s seat, this can be quite exhilarating. For the rest of us, it’s a little unnerving.
The Constitution authorizes three types of power, as we all learned in school—the legislative power is located in Congress, executive power is located in the president and his subordinates, and the judicial power is located in the courts. How does administrative power fit into that arrangement?
The conventional answer to this question is based on the claim of the modernity of administrative law. Administrative law, this argument usually goes, began in 1887 when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission, and it expanded decade by decade as Congress created more such agencies. A variant of this account suggests that administrative law is actually a little bit older—that it began to develop in the early practices of the federal government of the United States. But whether it began in the 1790s or in the 1880s, administrative law according to this account is a post-1789 development and—this is the key point—it arose as a pragmatic and necessary response to new and complex practical problems in American life. The pragmatic and necessitous character of this development is almost a mantra—and of course if looked at that way, opposition to administrative law is anti-modern and quixotic.
But there are problems with this conventional history of administrative law. Rather than being a modern, post-constitutional American development, I argue that the rise of administrative law is essentially a re-emergence of the absolute power practiced by pre-modern kings. Rather than a modern necessity, it is a latter-day version of a recurring threat—a threat inherent in human nature and in the temptations of power.

The Prerogative Power of Kings

The constitutional history of the past thousand years in common law countries records the repeated ebb and flow of absolutism on the one side and law on the other. English kings were widely expected to rule through law. They had Parliament for making law and courts of law for adjudicating cases, and they were expected to govern through the acts of these bodies. But kings were discontent with governing through the law and often acted on their own. The personal power that kings exercised when evading the law was called prerogative power.
Whereas ordinarily kings bound their subjects through statutes passed by Parliament, when exercising prerogative power they bound subjects through proclamations or decrees—or what we today call rules or regulations. Whereas ordinarily kings would repeal old statutes by obtaining new statutes, when exercising prerogative power they issued dispensations and suspensions—or what we today call waivers. Whereas ordinarily kings enforced the law through the courts of law, when exercising prerogative power they enforced their commands through their prerogative courts—courts such as the King’s Council, the Star Chamber, and the High Commission—or what we today call administrative courts. Ordinarily, English judges resolved legal disputes in accordance with their independent judgment regarding the law. But when kings exercised prerogative power, they expected deference from judges, both to their own decrees and to the holdings and interpretations of their extra-legal prerogative courts.
Although England did not have a full separation of powers of the sort written into the American Constitution, it did have a basic division of powers. Parliament had the power to make laws, the law courts had the power to adjudicate, and the king had the power to exercise force. But when kings acted through prerogative power, they or their prerogative courts exercised all government powers, overriding these divisions. For example, the Star Chamber could make regulations, as well as prosecute and adjudicate infractions. And defenders of this sort of prerogative power were not squeamish about describing it as absolute power. Absolutism was their justification.
Conceptually, there were three central elements of this absolutism: extra-legal power, supra-legal power, and the consolidation of power. It was extra-legal or outside the law in the sense that it bound the public not through laws or statutes, but through other means. It was supra-legal or above the law in the sense that kings expected judges to defer to it—notwithstanding their duty to exercise their own independent judgment. And it was consolidated in the sense that it united all government powers—legislative, executive, and judicial—in the king or in his prerogative courts. And underlying these three central elements was the usual conceptual justification for absolute power: necessity. Necessity, it was said, was not bound by law.
These claims on behalf of absolutism, of course, did not go unchallenged. When King John called Englishmen to account extralegally in his Council, England’s barons demanded in Magna Carta in 1215 that no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or even summoned except through the mechanisms of law. When 14th century English kings questioned men in the king’s Council, Parliament in 1354 and 1368 enacted due process statutes. When King James I attempted to make law through proclamations, judges responded in 1610 with an opinion that royal proclamations were unlawful and void. When James subsequently demanded judicial deference to prerogative interpretations of statutes, the judges refused. Indeed, in 1641 Parliament abolished the Star Chamber and the High Commission, the bodies then engaging in extra-legal lawmaking and adjudication. And most profoundly, English constitutional law began to develop—and it made clear that there could be no extra-legal,   supra-legal, or consolidated power.

The Rise of Absolutism in America

The United States Constitution echoes this. Early Americans were very familiar with absolute power. They feared this extra-legal, supra-legal, and consolidated power because they knew from English history that such power could evade the law and override all legal rights. It is no surprise, then, that the United States Constitution was framed to bar this sort of power. To be precise, Americans established the Constitution to be the source of all government power and to bar any absolute power. Nonetheless, absolute power has come back to life in common law nations, including America.
After absolute power was defeated in England and America, it circled back from the continent through Germany, and especially through Prussia. There, what once had been the personal prerogative power of kings became the bureaucratic administrative power of the states. The Prussians were the leaders of this development in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 19th century they became the primary theorists of administrative power, and many of them celebrated its evasion of constitutional law and constitutional rights.
This German theory would become the intellectual source of American administrative law. Thousands upon thousands of Americans studied administrative power in Germany, and what they learned there about administrative power became standard fare in American universities. At the same time, in the political sphere, American Progressives were becoming increasingly discontent with elected legislatures, and they increasingly embraced German theories of administration and defended the imposition of administrative law in America in terms of pragmatism and necessity.
The Progressives, moreover, understood what they were doing. For example, in 1927, a leading Progressive theorist openly said that the question of whether an American administrative officer could issue regulations was similar to the question of whether pre-modern English kings could issue binding proclamations. By the 1920s, however, Progressives increasingly were silent about the continuity between absolute power and modern administrative power, as this undermined their claims about its modernity and lawfulness.
In this way, over the past 120 years, Americans have reestablished the very sort of power that the Constitution most centrally forbade. Administrative law is extra-legal in that it binds Americans not through law but through other mechanisms—not through statutes but through regulations—and not through the decisions of courts but through other adjudications. It is supra-legal in that it requires judges to put aside their independent judgment and defer to administrative power as if it were above the law—which our judges do far more systematically than even the worst of 17th century English judges. And it is consolidated in that it combines the three powers of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—in administrative agencies.
Let me close by addressing just two of many constitutional problems illuminated by the re-emergence of absolutism in the form of administrative power: delegation and procedural rights.
One standard defense of administrative power is that Congress uses statutes to delegate its lawmaking power to administrative agencies. But this is a poor defense. The delegation of lawmaking has long been a familiar feature of absolute power. When kings exercised extra-legal power, they usually had at least some delegated authority from Parliament. Henry VIII, for example, issued binding proclamations under an authorizing statute called the Act of Proclamations. His binding proclamations were nonetheless understood to be exercises of absolute power. And in the 18th century the Act of Proclamations was condemned as unconstitutional.
Against this background, the United States Constitution expressly bars the delegation of legislative power. This may sound odd, given that the opposite is so commonly asserted by scholars and so routinely accepted by the courts. But read the Constitution. The Constitution’s very first substantive words are, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” The word “all” was not placed there by accident. The Framers understood that delegation had been a problem in English constitutional history, and the word “all” was placed there precisely to bar it.
As for procedural rights, the history is even more illuminating. Administrative adjudication evades almost all of the procedural rights guaranteed under the Constitution. It subjects Americans to adjudication without real judges, without juries, without grand juries, without full protection against self-incrimination, and so forth. Like the old prerogative courts, administrative courts substitute inquisitorial process for the due process of law—and that’s not just an abstract accusation; much early administrative procedure appears to have been modelled on civilian-derived inquisitorial process. Administrative adjudication thus becomes an open avenue for evasion of the Bill of Rights.
The standard justification for the administrative evasion of procedural rights is that they apply centrally to the regular courts, but not entirely to administrative adjudication. But the history shows that procedural rights developed primarily to bar prerogative or administrative proceedings, not to regulate what the government does in regular courts of law. As I already mentioned, the principle of due process developed as early as the 14th century, when Parliament used it to prevent the exercise of extra-legal power by the King’s Council. It then became a constitutional principle in the 17th century in opposition to the prerogative courts. Similarly, jury rights developed partly in opposition to administrative proceedings, and thus some of the earliest constitutional cases in America held administrative proceedings unconstitutional for depriving defendants of a jury trial.
* * *
In sum, the conventional understanding of administrative law is utterly mistaken. It is wrong on the history and oblivious to the danger. That danger is absolutism: extra-legal, supra-legal, and consolidated power. And the danger matters because administrative power revives this absolutism. The Constitution carefully barred this threat, but constitutional doctrine has since legitimized this dangerous sort of power. It therefore is necessary to go back to basics. Among other things, we should no longer settle for some vague notion of “rule of law,” understood as something that allows the delegation of legislative and judicial powers to administrative agencies. We should demand rule through law and rule under law. Even more fundamentally, we need to reclaim the vocabulary of law: Rather than speak of administrative law, we should speak of administrative power—indeed, of absolute power or more concretely of extra-legal, supra-legal, and consolidated power. Then we at least can begin to recognize the danger.

The Communist Takeover Of America - 45 Declared Goals

The Communist Takeover Of America - 45 Declared Goals

The Communist Takeover Of
America - 45 Declared Goals

From Greg Swank



You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As you read this, 39 years later, you should be shocked by the events that have played themselves out. I first ran across this list 3 years ago but was unable to attain a copy and it has bothered me ever since. Recently, Jeff Rense posted it on his site and I would like to thank him for doing so. http://www.rense.com
 
Communist Goals (1963) Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963
 
Current Communist Goals EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, January 10, 1963 .
 
Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.
 
At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:
 
[From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]
 
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
 
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
 
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
 
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
 
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
 
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
 
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
 
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
 
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
 
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
 
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
 
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
 
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
 
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
 
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
 
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
 
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
 
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
 
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
 
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
 
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
 
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
 
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
 
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
 
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
 
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
 
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."
 
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
 
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
 
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
 
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
 
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
 
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
 
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
 
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
 
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
 
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
 
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
 
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
 
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
 
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
 
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.
 
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
 
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
 
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
 
Note by Webmaster: The Congressional Record back this far has not be digitized and posted on the Internet.
 
It will probably be available at your nearest library that is a federal repository. Call them and ask them. Your college library is probably a repository. This is an excellent source of government records. Another source are your Congress Critters. They should be more than happy to help you in this matter. You will find the Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto interesting at this point.
 
Webmaster Forest Glen Durland found the document in the library.
 
Sources are listed below.
 
Microfilm: California State University at San Jose Clark Library, Government Floor Phone (408)924-2770 Microfilm Call Number: J 11.R5
 
Congressional Record, Vol. 109 88th Congress, 1st Session Appendix Pages A1-A2842 Jan. 9-May 7, 1963 Reel 12
 
 
1963- The Year That Changed America
 
By Greg Swank
12-4-2
Over the years, I have shared in debates and discussions regarding the current state of affairs in the U.S., and the changing social climate of this great nation. Since the "baby-boomer" generation, society and its culture have become noticeably different than the way it was 50 years ago. From the late 50's to the 70's a series of events took place contributing to the way we are currently living. However, like anything else, there has to be a starting point at which the wheels are put into motion. Sometimes it can be a single event, such as war, but more often, it is a series of events, some intentional, some planned, others unpredictable. There is always a pivotal point when things begin to change. I believe that time was 1963.
 
For my generation, some of the following will certainly stir old memories. If you born later, this may serve as a brief history lesson into the times your parents traveled through.
 
By 1963 television was the leading sources of entertainment. The public enjoyed a different type of programming back then. Lessons on life could be viewed weekly on "Leave it to Beaver" or "My Three Sons." There were hero's back then that never drew blood, "The Lone Ranger" and "The Adventures of Superman." Cartoon series evolved, such as, "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons" without messages of empowering the children, using vulgarities or demeaning parental guidance. Family's could spend a weekend evening watching "Ed Sullivan," "Bonanza" or "Gunsmoke." For those who enjoyed thrill and suspense, we were blessed with "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and the "Twilight Zone." 'My Favorite Martian," "Ozzie and Harriet," "Donna Reed" and "Sea Hunt" also kept viewers entertained weekly.
 
Movie theaters were not multiplex units with 15 screens, rather, one single, giant big screen with adequate sound and hard seats without springs. "Tom Jones" had won the Academy award for best picture. "How The West Was Won," "Cleopatra," "Lily of the Fields," "The Great Escape," "The Birds," and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" were all box office hits.
 
By years end, "The Beatles" had played for the British Royal Family and were laying the groundwork to conquer the U.S. the following year. Eric Clapton began his journey to fame with Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Jim McCarty and their band, "The Yardbirds." Out on the west coast the surf was beginning to rock'n'roll with "The Beach Boys" and their first song to reach the top ten list, "Surfin' U.S.A."
 
"Joys of Jell-O" recipes for quivering florescent foodstuff hit the stores. U.S. Postal rates went up to five cents for the first ounce. AT&T introduced touch-tone telephones. The Yankees played in the World Series again; but lost to the Dodgers in four straight. The government and NASA began the Apollo program.
 
This is just a brief snapshot of some things that were going on back in 1963. Remember?
 
While some of these events played an important role in the direction of change that affect us today, many of them were lost to much greater, more political events, that I believe put everything into motion.
 
On January 10, 1963, the House of Representative and later the Senate began reviewing a document entitled "Communist Goals for Taking Over America." It contained an agenda of 45 separate issues that, in hindsight was quite shocking back then and equally shocking today. Here, in part, are some key points listed in that document.
 
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
 
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
 
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states.
 
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind.
 
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
 
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
 
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
 
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
 
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
 
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
 
27. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."
 
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
 
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
 
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
 
You can see the entire list on this web page - http://www.truthtrek.net/politics/takeover.htm
 
Now, I am not saying that the U.S. is under some kind of Communist control, but what I do find frightening, is of the 45 issues listed, nearly all of them have come to pass. Remember this was in January 1963.
 
In 1963 the news media showed women burning their bras as the women's liberation movement took off with the publishing of "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan. Martin Luther King was jailed in April and civil unrest was being brought to the forefront. On August 28th the media brought us live coverage of the march on Washington and Dr. Kings famous "I had a dream" speech. The Cuban missile crisis found its way in to our homes and our nation was gearing up for conflict.
 
By September of 1963 we had lost some very influential people, Pope John XXIII, Robert Frost, and country legend Patsy Cline, to name a few. In the early hours of November 22nd we learned of the quiet passing of C.S. Lewis and hours later we were brought to our knees when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and our nation mourned.
 
So you see, while long since forgotten, 1963 could very well have been, one of the most important years since our founding fathers provided us with the Constitution of the United States. Which brings me to one final and extremely important decision that was made during this most provocative year.
 
On June 17, 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that any Bible reciting or prayer, in public schools, was deemed unconstitutional.
 
While American's have endured great prosperity over the past 40 years we have also lost our moral compass and direction. In reviewing the research, data supports 1963 as a focal point, demonstrating a downward slope in our moral and social decline through 2001.
 
Certainly, one would have to agree that all of these events have had a profound impact on the way our current social structure has been changed. Personally, if I had to choose one specific event that has demonstrated the demoralization of our country, it would have to be the decision of the U.S Supreme Court in June of 1963.
 
But there is always "hope." As always, I welcome your comments and can easily be reached. Thanks for the response to "Daddy, What's Fluoride?" My email is: greg@truthtrek.net
 
 
Comment
 
From Founders' America
foundersamerica@hotmail.com
12-7-2
 
Jeff...adding a couple of my own numbers:
 
__ 46. Import anti-white racists from the Third World, via an open-borders policy, then force their integration to divide and conquer white Western civilization in North America.
 
 
__ 47. Feminize and disarm both the citizenry and military; especially disarm white males.