President Obama's Latest Attempt to Bypass Congress

The recent FBI order to coerce Apple (inc) to write backdoor software to break into the phones of the San Bernardino shooters as a part of its investigation as been met with wall of resistance by Apple, stating it refuses to unlock the phones due to very real and worrying Governmental intrusion into privacy of its citizens that our Government is sworn to protect. Apple has used the courts to block the injunction served by the FBI, and has publicly stated that it will never unlock the phones.
President Obama, in his ever-present desire to rule as an uncrowned Monarch, has pulled out an antiquated, seldom used law from 1789 called the All Writs Act which compels law enforcement to demand technology from a company in the course of its investigation.

As Written into Law:

"The All Writs Act is a United States federal statute, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1651, which authorizes the United States federal courts to "issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law."
(a) The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.
(b) An alternative writ or rule nisi may be issued by a justice or judge of a court which has jurisdiction.

Application of the All Writs Act requires the fulfillment of four conditions:^[3]

• The absence of alternative remedies—the act is only applicable when other judicial tools are not available.
• An independent basis for jurisdiction—the act authorizes writs in aid of jurisdiction, but does not in itself create any federal subject-matter jurisdiction.
• Necessary or appropriate in aid of jurisdiction—the writ must be necessary or appropriate to the particular case.
• Usages and principles of law—the statute requires courts to issue writs "agreeable to the usages and principles of law."

Example:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. New York Telephone Co. 434 U.S. 159 (1977) that the act provided authority for a U.S. District Court to order a telephone company to assist law enforcement officials in installing a device on a rotary phone in order to track the phone numbers dialed on that phone, which was reasonably believed to be used in furtherance of criminal activity.

Senator Mike Lee (R) Utah, has illustrated the Obama Administration's latest attempt to bypass Congress on this issue in his weekly communication with his (Lee's) constituents. This is another clear violation by Obama of the Founding Documents he has twice sworn to Uphold, Protect and Defend," which he has clearly lied about doing.

"After seven years in office, it is now very clear what President Obama does when Congress refuses to do his bidding: he simply ignores the lawmaking branch and tries to use raw power to change the law by fiat.

He did it on immigration to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. He did on education to force Common Core on the states. And now he is doing it again to try to rewrite our nation’s privacy laws.

In 1994, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which determines the requirements facing technology companies when law-enforcement agencies want their help with criminal investigations.

Specifically, the law states that it “does not authorize any law enforcement agency or officer to require any specific design of equipment, features [...] or system configurations to be adopted by any [...] manufacturer of telecommunications equipment.”

In other words, a mobile phone manufacturer, like Apple, can’t be forced to create a backdoor key for law-enforcement agencies to use to access any phone they want.

For years President Obama sought to change this law, but Congress disagreed.

So when one of the San Bernardino terrorists failed to destroy one of his three mobile phones, which was owned by the county for which he worked, President Obama saw his chance to rewrite the law through the courts.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is now claiming in federal court that the All Writs Act, passed in 1789, empowers the law-enforcement agency to compel Apple to create new software that will allow to get FBI agents into the terrorist’s phone.

Earlier this week, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, testified that there was no link between the president’s failure to change the law in Congress and the FBI’s decision to use the All Writs Act to achieve the same result through the courts.

But a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, who received a similar All Writs Act request from the FBI exposed President Obama’s tactics. In a February 29 ruling, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein wrote: “It is also clear that the government has made the considered decision that it is better off securing such crypto-legislative authority from the courts (in proceedings that had always been, at the time it filed the instant Application, shielded from public scrutiny) rather than taking the chance that open legislative debate might produce a result less to its liking.”

“Indeed,” Orenstein continued, “on the very same day that the government filed the ex parte Application in this case [...] it made a public announcement that after months of discussion about the need to update CALEA to provide the kind of authority it seeks here, it would not seek such legislation.”

People of good faith can have honest disagreements about what tech companies should or should not be compelled to do by law enforcement. But the proper place for that debate and policymaking process is Congress, not the courts."

When will Congress collectively stand up and demand the President cease his assault on Congress and the Constitution? Frankly, after everything he has done, including his open defiance of Congress, I am surprised they have failed to address the Power Grab he so blatantly uses to get his way.

Problems In the US Senate (2015) Begin With The Democratic Party

I received the following newsletter from Senator Mike Lee (UT) in our nation's Capital...


Time to Stop Delaying Democracy

"The Senate has been a much busier place these last few weeks than it was under the previous leadership.  With Republicans in charge of the Senate we have held more votes on amendments in the first few weeks of the 114^th Congress than were allowed in the Democrat-led Senate during all of 2014.  And we have already seen the positive effects of restoring the American people’s voice in the Senate.  During the debate to authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, I introduced two amendments that were voted on by the Senate.  The first amendment would limit frivolous lawsuits filed under the Endangered Species Act, and the second would speed up the process for the BLM to approve leasing permits.

The Senate and the House eventually passed the Keystone XL pipeline bill, and it is now sitting on the president's desk, waiting for him to sign it into law or veto it.

For the next major legislative item, Republicans are trying to keep our promise to the American people and do what we were sent here to do: keep the government funded, especially the agencies protecting our homeland security, and hold the President accountable for his abuses of power.  But standing in the way are Senate Democrats who refuse to even allow consideration of the DHS funding bill, so they won’t have to declare where they stand on the President’s illegal and unconstitutional action on executive amnesty.  This effort to try and hide from the American people is embarrassing.
 
Republican leaders in the Senate have repeatedly signaled that they will give Democrats every opportunity to amend provisions of the bill that they don’t like.  But even this is rejected, because it would require Democrats to go on record as supporting or opposing the president’s executive amnesty.

Democrats say they have an alternative bill and insist that we pass it immediately. There are two problems with that approach.

First, while that may have been how the Senate worked under the previous majority – writing bills in back rooms, waiting until the last minute to make them public, blocking amendments and debate, and ramming the bill through without any input from the American people – that’s not the way the Senate is supposed to work, and it’s not the way the Senate is working with Republicans in control.

And second, appropriations bills aren’t supposed to start in the Senate.  In fact, the House has not considered a Senate-originated appropriations bill since at least 1901 -  the period for which records are readily available.

And unfortunately for them, the bill the Democrats want is not supported in the House because it’s not supported by the American people.

It is time to stop delaying democracy; it’s time to stop hiding from the American people and start debating the future of homeland security funding."
After reading this, I want you to ask yourself, "How is my Senator voting in Congress, and does he/she represent the people, or are Party interests taking precedent over everything else?"
In this day and age, when corporate interests are seemingly placed above the welfare of the citizens of the great country, it is more vital than ever that you are aware of the politics in Washington D.C, and how you are affected by the decisions being made of your behalf. Are your Congressional Reps more interested in PAC's, Corporate Welfare and other Special Interests over and above that of their voting constituents? Or do they truly represent the Will of the People? Do you even know how to answer that?

If you don't know the answers to those questions, then please contact your House of Representatives duly elected Rep, and your US Senators. Sign up for their newsletters, write them on important issues--or even issues which are important to you!--get yourself involved in the process! If you do nothing, then don't like what's happening, then you really can't complain at all! So Write, Call, Read up on news and events, and know where your elected Congressional Reps stand on issues.
Things in DC will never change if ordinary people do nothing. Get involved!!!