Message from a Moonwalker
Honorable Harrison H. Schmitt, former US Senator from New Mexico, PhD in Geology, Apollo Astronaut
"The global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."
Let's listen to Jack's talk on global warming:
If you listen carefully,
you will hear Jack tell you the same things about
global warming that I tell you. We are both climate scientists with
enough experience to know only fools believe the government.
News Release December 31, 2009
by Harrison H. Schmitt
Harrison H. Schmitt
December 31, 2009
505 293 3575
For Immediate Release
FORMER SENATOR SCHMITT ACUSES NEW MEXICO DELEGATION OF PUTTING POLITICS AHEAD OF NATIONAL SECURITY
The New Mexico Congressional Delegation now advocates giving union leadership of screeners in the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) the power to control critical decisions in a time of war. They wish to make it possible to hold America hostage to union leadership demands. So reports the Albuquerque Journal of December 31, 2009. What a way to end the year!
Why, all of a sudden, has this issue even arisen? It is politics of the most insidious kind. The events leading up to the failed attempt by an Islamic terrorist to kill 290 people on Christmas Day have nothing to do with TSA or its lack of a confirmed Administrator. Those events have everything to do with a President, Attorney General, and Delegation that refuse to admit that a state of war exists between America and radical Islam. How can the Obama Administration and the New Mexico Delegation say no war exists? Doing so ignores all the terrorist events directed against Americans over the last 50 years and particularly over the last decade.
For the moment, set aside the question of whether or not the Government should be screening ALL air travelers. We know exactly who to profile as potential terrorists with whom we are at war - whether the President and the Delegation wish to call it ³war² or not. However we ultimately settle that question, it defies the common sense of most Americans to give the leadership of any group of employees whose activities support national security requirements the power to control national security decisions through work rule demands and through seniority rather than merit-based decisions. Everyone knows that eventually, union leadership will want the power to call strikes to get what they want and this Administration and Congress will be happy to give them that power.
Would we want the power to strike or even to control employee assignments to be held by a union leader representing the Armed Forces, the U.S. Coast Guard, or the Air Traffic Controllers? Clearly, that would be absurd. In this light, even the existing unionization of the Border Patrol and the Customs Service should be revisited.
Why, then, does the Delegation want to give critical national security power to a union leadership of those who protect air travel? In making that argument, the Delegation ignores the Constitution's edict that the President has primary responsibility for the "common defence." It once again puts the political support of organized labor ahead of the state¹s and the nation¹s interests.
The existence of organizations consisting of members of entities like TSA and the Flight Controllers has a strong Constitutional justification in the exercise of the 1st Amendment guarantee of the "right of the people to peaceable to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Such organizations can and should provide insights and advice to management from those who know their jobs best. No constitutional right exists, however, to union-led coercion or intimidation. That is not what the 1st Amendment's use of the word "petition" means.
The Delegation, apparently, also would not support restricting the intense screening of air, train, and bus travelers to those that match the obvious profile of the foreign and foreign-influenced terrorists that have attacked America. So far, without exception, this profile shows we are at war with radical Islam. We should vigorously act accordingly or we are doomed to successful future attacks on the homeland and our economy. Most detrimentally, current policy results in major, unnecessary restrictions on the liberty of traveling Americans.
A final note worth remembering: Courageous people who watch who else are traveling, and, yes, "profile," constitute our primary defense against travel terrorism.
*****
Harrison H. Schmitt is a former United States Senator from New Mexico as well as a geologist and former Apollo Astronaut. He currently is an aerospace and private enterprise consultant and a member of the new Committee of Correspondence.
News Release December 28, 2009
by Harrison H. Schmitt
FORMER SENATOR SCHMITT SLAMS NEW MEXICO'S CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION
FOR ATTACK ON LIBERTY AND THE CONSTITUTION
The current New Mexico Congressional delegation and its Democratic
Party leaders in Washington have served neither New Mexico nor the
United States well in 2009. The prospects for 2010 are even worse.
Senators Jeff Bingaman and Mark Udall and Congressmen Martin
Heinrich, Ben Ray Lujan, and Harry Teague continue to undermine
liberty and constitutional government in America. Effectively
advocating national socialism, they persist in supporting and
enabling abuse of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as well as
the 5th, 10th, and 14th Amendments to that founding document. As a
consequence, regulation substitutes for liberty and bureaucratic
nannies replace personal responsibility - all at the financial
expense of the liberty and tax dollars of working New Mexicans.
The Founders intended for the Constitution to limit the powers of
the Congress to "all legislative powers herein granted," with
unspecified functions of government later left to the States and the
people by the 10th Amendment. In this context, the Commerce Clause
of Article I clearly aims at providing a uniform flow of commerce
"among the several States" and not at regulating ALL interactions
among the people. The Courts' too often successful argument that the
Commerce Clause can be paired with the Necessary and Proper Clause
of Article I still stands wrong on its face. The Necessary and
Proper Clause specifically refers to the "execution of the foregoing
powers" that is, enumerated constitutional powers and no others, a
principle that must be reaffirmed.
Additionally, the 5th Amendment to the Constitution states, "No
person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law." After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was
ratified and requires that "No State shall deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Although
specifically applicable to the "States," the "equal protection"
clause of the 14th Amendment, taken in concert with the "due
process" clause of the 5th Amendment, has come to apply to the
Federal Government as well. Many federal laws and proposed laws, as
well as regulations, therefore are unconstitutional in that they
reward or penalize some individuals and not others, depriving those
individuals of "equal protection." In addition to there not being
specified federal power to do so, restricting individual choice in
the purchase of health insurance, in education, and in energy use
would be just three currently visible examples of
unconstitutionality with respect to "equal protection." Finally,
additional incompatibility with the 14th Amendment occurs when
States are required to enforce federal law that violates "equal
protection."
The Constitution's 10th Amendment leaves constitutionally
unspecified functions, or non-enumerated powers, of government to
the States and the people by stating: "The powers not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People."
Thus, the United States Government, that is Congress and the
President, have no constitutional authority to exert power over, for
example, otherwise legal individual health decisions, energy
production and use, private business conduct, educational desires,
labor relations, and financial contracts.
In these and other areas, the Delegation has allowed
Government to erode the peoples' liberty and States' authority.
Have States like New Mexico served their citizens well under the
power of the 10th Amendment? Clearly not well enough; but that is
New Mexico's problem to fix, not the Federal Government's.
One does not have to look far to find examples of existing or
proposed federal laws and regulations, wrongly supported by the New
Mexico Delegation, that are unconstitutional on their face under
Article I or the 5th, 10th, and 14th Amendments. These include
mandated limits on our choices of
health care and health insurance;
automobiles and other energy use;
K-12 education; and
business-employee and other free enterprise relationships.
Also, the Delegation has done nothing to prevent the taking of
private property from one person for more favored private use by
another and prohibited by the 5th Amendment.
The New Mexico Congressional delegation has wandered far into an
unconstitutional wilderness with its advocacy and support of heavy
handed federal control of health care, home ownership, business and
labor relations, financial institutions, executive and employee
salaries, energy production and use, consumer goods manufacturing,
takings of private property, and the list goes on and on.
New Mexicans must join with the clear majority of like-minded
Americans elsewhere to protect liberty and take back control of
their governments. It is obvious that our current Senators and
Representatives in Congress will not do this for us.
*****
Harrison H. Schmitt is a former United States Senator from New
Mexico as well as a geologist and former Apollo Astronaut. He
currently is an aerospace and private enterprise consultant and a
member of the new Committee of Correspondence.