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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

BO and the congress do get thousands of emails every week. They have filters 
that count and discard them.  That was true of faxes before the internet.  A 
(non-form type) personal letter is still the best way to get the attention of 
a politician's office.  They do read the personal letters. 

 And, they will take stats from phone calls.  Mass emails are like junk mail 
to politicians.

 I have never seen a demonstation accomplish anything.  That's not to say I 
don't agree with what is being demonstrated for or against; I just see it as 
a futile exercise.  Hell, the politicians come out and join the 
demonstartors.  'can't be too upsetting. 

I specifically said that I didn't necessarily agree with the man .  My point 
was, and is, is that he actually is upsetting the system; if large numbers of 
people followed his example the system would have to change.  He has a 
"right" to go to trial and then appeal.  The process cost the 'state' time 
and money.

The Constitution guarantess a speedy trial.  The number is in the high 90% of 
'all' cases, civil and criminal, never go to trial.  They are settled, paid, 
plea-bargained, etc.  The system would shut down if people simply exercised 
their Constitutional rights, as this man is doing.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 


--- On Mon, 12/1/08, Lynn Wigglesworth <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com> wrote:


> The problem is that the guy is dead wrong. Unless he only
> travels on roads that HE owns, he'd better follow the
> rules of those who control the roads. Driving isn't a
> right.
> 
> Don't people clog up the courts all the time? People
> sue each other willy nilly and fight everything. If
> you've already gotten the ticket, you've already
> broken the law. Courts can't decide the fairness of a
> law; their job is to enforce it.. I think it would be more
> effective for those million people to spend their energy
> getting people to spread the word, wirte letters, and
> protest (not just once, but every chance they get). If Obama
> or your congressperson got thousands of emails every week,
> week after week, about the same subject, they might take
> notice.
> 
> Lynn Wigglesworth
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "bob ford"
> <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
> To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 10:22 AM
> Subject: Re: [Homestead] Our digital trail -
> "Orwellian future"
> 
> 
> > I just ran across this article.  This man, while most
> of us might find him a bit nutty is worth much more than a
> letter writer or a demonstrator.
> > 
> > I'll give you an example.  Take a million person
> march on D.C.  Sure the Wash Post and the NYT and their
> colleagues would be there to 'report' on all of the
> brave souls, give it front page coverage, 'run 24/7 on
> cable news, with silly celebrities at the podium.  But, in
> afew weeks it would be forgotten, and what would it have
> accomplished ?
> > 
> > Now, take that same number (one million or whatever)
> of people, spread them out across the fifty states, all
> fighting their charges in court. Traffic tickets, tickets
> for selling raw milk, public drunkenness, marijuana
> possession; whatever;  a million people clogging the courts
> nationwide, would almost shut down the 'state'.  And
> everyone wouldn't have to plan to be at the same place ,
> at the same time, for two days.
> > 
> > This man will end up in jail, and is already forgotten
>  because most never heard in the first place.  Why he is
> fighting the state isn't imporatant; 'the way'
> he is fighting the state is the lesson, in my opinion
> > 
> > Anyway...............
> > 
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Nacogdoches man ready to go to jail over his traffic
> tickets
> > 
> > A battle for 'personal liberty'
> > 
> > By MATTHEW STOFF
> > The Daily Sentinel
> > 
> > Sunday, November 30, 2008
> > 
> > With his legal documents neatly typed and ready since
> 1999, Eddie Craig is just waiting to be arrested.
> > 
> > A local business owner with no formal legal training,
> Craig has studied the law on his own for 15 years, preparing
> arguments for his case, a rebellion against tyranny and
> injustice that began earlier this month in municipal court.
> > 
> > At 44, Craig has no driver's license, but still
> drives a blue 1991 Ford Crown Victoria, which has no license
> plates, no registration, no insurance and a broken brake
> light. For these reasons, Nacogdoches police officers issued
> Craig ordinary citations in December 2007 and again in
> January of this year.
> > 
> > But Craig's case is anything but ordinary. Instead
> of paying his tickets — about $910 in fines for the first
> one — Craig filed a lengthy affidavit in municipal court
> denying that any crime had been committed and challenging
> the standing of the court to prosecute him. There, and in
> subsequent filings, all researched and authored on his own,
> Craig cited legal sources like the Magna Carta, the state
> constitutions of Texas and Arizona and countless subsections
> of state law and administrative code, all of which he
> believes supports his case.
> > 
> > Craig objects to nearly every facet of the justice
> system, from the lack of court reporters in the municipal
> court, to summonses delivered by mail instead of by hand, to
> judges whose salaries are paid by the city — an
> unconscionable conflict of interest, Craig says. But
> Craig's case really hinges on his worry that government
> has strayed too far from its original purpose, assuming
> powers it was never supposed to exact over citizens of a
> free republic.
> > 
> > "I am trying to be left alone," Craig said.
> "I want the right to travel from place to place without
> harassment. I want the right to use my property for its
> intended purpose without harassment. I want my right to not
> have to pay fees to anyone for the right to use my property.
> It's really that simple. We can't be a nation of
> free people if we're not really free."
> > 
> > 
> > ARGUING THE LAW
> > 
> > Explaining his position, Craig shifts his tone
> rapidly, espousing philosophical platitudes one moment and
> pedantic readings of the law the next. His most grounded
> legal theory centers around the principle of "corpus
> delicti," a Latin phrase meaning "body of the
> crime."
> > 
> > Citing old Supreme Court rulings invoking the phrase,
> Craig says that the government must prove that he intended
> to commit harm in order to convict him. "I'm not
> accused of harming anyone. Therefore the state has no
> standing to bring the case," he said.
> > 
> > But Ron Beal, a professor of law at Baylor University,
> who studies Texas administrative law, disagrees.
> > 
> > "All corpus delicti means in modern times is that
> you must prove that he actually committed the crime, not
> that there was a harm," he said. "We don't
> have to show that because he didn't have a license he
> crashed into people. We just have to show that he committed
> the crime, which has been designated by the state as
> harm."
> > 
> > Craig does not find this point of view convincing. To
> him, the driver's license amounts to nothing more than a
> tax, with no grounding in public safety. "How does a
> piece of plastic in your pocket protect me?" he said.
> > 
> > Tom Vinger, a spokesman for the Texas Department of
> Public Safety, which issues the state driver's licenses,
> offered multiple answers to Craig's question. "If
> you have a driver's license, that means you've been
> through some form of skills testing and also have knowledge
> of the rules of the road. And, of course, if you have a
> driver's license, it's easier to get insurance,
> which is absolutely critical," he said. And, Vinger
> noted, the rules of the road are codified in state law.
> > 
> > Perhaps predictably, Craig disagrees. Beginning with
> the premise that no free man has authority over any other
> free man, Craig concludes that the lawmakers also lack the
> authority to require licenses, insurance or license plates.
> > 
> > "The legislature is one of limited powers
> delegated by the people," Craig said. "If the
> people do not have that authority individually, they cannot
> delegate it to their representatives. That would be
> asinine."
> > 
> > Beal said, however, that such power does exist,
> explicitly conferred by the Texas and federal constitutions.
> "Simply put, if the Legislature decides that it's
> in the public welfare for people not to drive cars without a
> license, then that is a final determination by the
> government. If we don't like it, we have to vote
> everybody out who was in favor of that and elect people who
> will take that law away," he said. "When we
> approved our constitution, we gave the Legislature the
> police power to regulate us to the degree that we'll
> tolerate, or we'll vote them out of office."
> > 
> > But Beal's reading of the law is unlikely to deter
> Craig, who simply rejects the right of the Legislature to
> rule "by fiat or say so."
> > 
> > When Nacogdoches' Municipal Judge Juanita Springer
> denied Craig's motion to dismiss the case and set a
> trial date for Nov. 17, Craig didn't show up. Instead,
> he is waiting for the police to act on the newly-minted
> warrant for his arrest.
> > 
> > "When they proceed on it, then the judge is
> acting on her own authority, as will be the police officer,
> and the city will get sued," Craig said.
> > 
> > 
> > A STAND FOR IDEALS
> > 
> > As he resists the intrusion of government in his life,
> Craig has emerged as an unlikely kind of agent provocateur,
> calculating moves he believes will goad the state into
> acting illegally.
> > 
> > "My purpose here is to get the court to do
> exactly what they've done, which is violate my rights,
> violate the law and commit a crime, which they've done
> in spades," Craig said. "I have looked at this
> just like it was a game of chess. Here's what the law
> says they have to do, and everywhere they were supposed to
> do it and did not, they lost a chess piece."
> > 
> > Springer, who heard Craig's arguments and was
> unmoved, invited him to appeal her decision to a higher
> court.
> > 
> > "His motions were not based on any laws that are
> in place," she said. "He just was arguing that we
> had not authority to do certain things that we do have the
> authority to do."
> > 
> > In her time on the bench, Springer has never heard any
> arguments like Craig's. She said most people just pay
> their tickets.
> > 
> > Craig acknowledges that he's making a lot of work
> for himself. But he has pored over arcane legal texts for
> more than a decade preparing for this crusade against
> injustice, and the threat of arrest is no hindrance.
> > 
> > "I became interested because one year I watched
> the county of Nacogdoches threaten my mom and step-dad with
> foreclosure on their property for back taxes. For years,
> I've watched all kinds of law enforcement officers write
> tickets for no crimes whatsoever, just to take money. And I
> have gone to court before and watched them railroad people
> through with no opportunity to defend, no opportunity to do
> anything other than just pay up or go to jail. That's
> wrong."
> > 
> > Craig also admits that his fight is an uphill battle.
> Deep down, he said, he believes he can win his case, set a
> precedent and earn his "personal liberty." But
> he's wary of the possibility that some higher court will
> issue a gag order, keeping his winning legal opinion out of
> the public's view and the flow of money steadily flowing
> into state coffers.
> > 
> > "I won't know 'til I get there,"
> Craig said.
> > 
> > 
> > ONGOING VIGILANCE
> > 
> > Eddie Craig's fight against the power of
> government is, of course, only the latest in a long history
> of civil actions, protests, nation building and wars based
> on the principles of freedom and justice.
> > 
> > Though he never mentioned any connection to the group,
> Craig's own brand of rebellion most closely resembles
> the tactics of the Republic of Texas, a band of radicals,
> which rejected the 1845 annexation of Texas by the United
> States. By invoking sections of international law and rules
> governing treaties, the Republic of Texas questioned the
> validity of Texas' statehood and denied that federal
> laws were valid here. Leaders of the group were jailed in
> 1997 after they took two "occupiers" hostage and
> held them captive at their "embassy."
> > 
> > And while Craig has never demonstrated any propensity
> for violence, his pugnacious questioning of the law has
> inspired at least one other man to follow his lead rejecting
> laws usually embraced by most.
> > 
> > Last year, Michael Sullivan of Pollock filed his own
> self-authored motion for dismissal for charges that came
> after he mailed his driver's license back to the
> Department of Public Safety in protest. After some research,
> Sullivan found that the Nacogdoches county attorney,
> Jefferson Davis, had not properly filed his oath of office
> with the county clerk, which, Sullivan claims, invalidates
> all his official actions. He is still waiting to hear what
> will happen in his case.
> > 
> > The volume of reading and hours of work, plus the risk
> of jail, make it unlikely for most citizens to begin
> rejecting their traffic tickets on deep, ideological
> grounds. But if more are inspired to challenge the
> assumptions of law and society, Craig said it will be a
> victory for the people, whether the government wins or not.
> > 
> > "It's the people's responsibility to hold
> them accountable, which is exactly what I'm trying to
> do."
> > 
> >
> http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/11/30/eddie_craig_113008.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=10
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > --- On Mon, 12/1/08, Lynn Wigglesworth
> <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> From: Lynn Wigglesworth
> <lynnw1366 AT hotmail.com>
> >> Subject: Re: [Homestead] Our digital trail -
> "Orwellian future"
> >> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
> >> Date: Monday, December 1, 2008, 6:59 AM
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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