10/02/12 – Dennis Marburger – The Scott Horton Show

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Our next guest on the show today is Dennis Marburger.
And he's working with the Tenth Amendment Center and the Campaign for Liberty.
And this group in his county in Michigan, their chapter, I guess, of people against the NDAA.
I didn't even know there was such a thing as people against the NDAA.
Welcome back to the show.
Dennis, how are you doing, man?
Hey, Scott, I'm doing great.
Thank you very much for inviting me to be on.
Well, I really appreciate you joining us.
A longtime friend of the show, of course, known as Haji in the chat room much of the time.
And, in fact, please go back to the archives and search for his name, Dennis Marburger, and you'll find where he sort of helped guest interview someone on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, I think it was, back a while ago.
Right, wasn't it?
Yes, it was Dr. Ara Sanjian from the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
There you go.
And that was a great interview.
And, by the way, Azerbaijan is back up in the news, as you probably saw over at antiwar.com the other day.
I did see that.
You know what, maybe we can talk about that.
I'm going to write down a little bit of a note because that's an extremely important story about a country that nobody even knows where it is and that kind of thing.
But, well, that's why it's extra interesting to me.
And, of course, it's extremely important matters of the biggest wars and peace at stake.
But, anyway, so let's talk about people against the NDAA.
First, very quickly, tell us about the NDAA.
And then, secondly, tell us about the people against it.
Okay.
Scott, yeah, well, the NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act.
And it may pass from every year, but the 2012 version and apparently the 2013 version that's now up for consideration contains some very onerous and horrible provisions.
In the 2012 version, they were known as Sections 1021 and 1022, which together, essentially, with the way they've changed the wording, opens up the gates wide open for the executive branch and any bureaucrats working in conjunction with the executive branch to essentially use the military at their discretion to arrest Americans, hold them indefinitely without the right to speedy and public trial, and either have people disappeared in this country or even rendered overseas to one of the tortured dungeons overseas.
And so it's really a horrible thing.
I mean, we had counted up in working on this that it had about around 20 constitutional violations and that's even before we get to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
And that's between our state constitution and the constitution for the United States.
So it's really awful on many levels.
Hey, you know what?
Let me stop you right there.
I'm sorry, too, but it's such an important point, I think.
And, you know, it's hard because a lot of times we have these conversations on a level where you can't go over every single thing in order to get to the new point.
But the truth of the matter is you have a lot of grown adults who know a lot of things about a lot of things but really who don't know anything about the Constitution or couldn't even begin to name the parts of the Constitution that the NDAA violate.
Could you explain a little bit?
I think it can really help fill in the gap of people's understanding about, you know, as bad as the Constitution is for creating this government, at least it has some pretty good restrictions there in Article I, Section 9 and in the Bill of Rights.
Oh, there you go, Scott.
Not surprisingly, you zeroed in on it.
Article I, Section 9, Clause 2's right to seek a writ of habeas corpus.
There's the First Amendment's right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
That goes out the window with this.
The Fourth Amendment's right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
The Fifth Amendment's right to be free from charge for an infamous or capital crime until presentment or indictment by a grand jury.
Also in the Fifth Amendment, the right to be free from deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
In the Sixth Amendment, the right in criminal prosecutions to enjoy a speedy trial by an impartial jury in the state and district where the crime shall have been committed.
Also in the Sixth Amendment, the right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.
The right to confront witnesses.
The right to counsel.
In the Eighth Amendment, the right to be free from excessive bail and fines and cruel and unusual punishment.
The Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
I also like to bring up the Ninth Amendment and the Tenth Amendment here for a couple reasons.
One is the Ninth Amendment says all the rights that we had that were granted by the creator before the government was formed and for whose protection the government was supposed to be formed are not sacrificed or limited by the document nor does the Constitution for the United States.
And of course the Tenth Amendment with the idea that any rights not expressly delegated to the feds are reserved for the states and or the people, that sort of thing.
And so it comes with all of those as well.
And then we had a bunch of things in the Michigan Constitution we found that also violated those.
And that's true I think for most if not all the state constitutions where there are numerous.
That is quite a litany, I've got to tell you Dennis.
You know the thing is, I mean basically what it sounds like is a screaming lunatic on the street corner in Los Angeles somewhere yelling that this is the end of America forever.
In this case this is not hyperbole at all.
I mean this is really one of these giant spikes in our coffin, no nail.
It's like a railroad spike in our coffin.
Yeah, and it's not even a golden one of course.
But I have to give credit here.
I think you may know Blake Filippi from the Rhode Island Liberty Coalition and also Tenth Amendment Center.
And he did an excellent job drafting up this document which lists a lot of these things in here.
And so Blake deserves credit for that.
But it truly is as draconian and as onerous as you suggest.
The problem isn't of course that people are overreacting.
If anything we're too somnolent.
There's not enough information in the media about this.
There are some nascent movements to fight back.
And I'm really glad that you were concerned enough because you have a lot of credibility.
You've always been a voice of moral clarity on these things.
And so I'm glad that you're giving some time on your program for us to get the word out.
It's just amazing to me that this can happen with, you know, see I don't know.
I'm so jaded and cynical now that I always say it's just a shrug.
But the truth is there are a lot of people who are really upset about this.
There are a lot of people who see it for what it is and want to find a way to stop it, want to do something.
I mean, damn, man.
You're going to go ahead and just, I mean, did you guys hear the list of parts of the Constitution, the protections of the Constitution eviscerated by this thing?
The power of the president to put your kid sister in military prison if he feels like it.
And no court can review it.
You know, literally martial law.
In effect, de facto, a general warrant on assault, basically.
A general arrest warrant on assault with the military power, with the war power.
It's absolutely as far out of control as it could possibly be.
And so here it looks like, you know, the Ron Paulians are saying, hey, we need something to do now that we're all friends and like doing stuff.
So you guys came up with this thing.
And it's, as you said, the Tenth Amendment Center, of course, is working really hard on this.
And you've got this thing, people against the NDAA.
And now is this just a Michigan thing or this is already nationwide?
You're the chapter leader of your county, is that correct?
Well, in Bloomfield Township, Bloomfield Hills are in the chapter leader.
This is a great story, and I'm glad we're able to bring this up.
There are a number of groups that are fighting against this.
And people against the NDAA, or PANDA as it's known, was started by a college student down the road from us in Bowling Green, Ohio.
His name is Dan Johnson.
And Dan is a very dynamic and knowledgeable and committed to the cause of liberty young man.
He's a sophomore college student at Bowling Green.
He's 19.
He's put together this group.
And, again, there's a whole lot of them that are fighting against it.
I want to say that one of the great things Dan has done, he's working on building coalitions, and we're doing that too.
So, yes, all the people who are concerned about life, liberty, and property, personal liberty and personal responsibility are getting involved in this.
So that is, of course, the Ron Paul community, following his greatest speaking tour in the history of liberty and freedom, as you called it.
But we're also working with people of other political persuasions.
And what we're finding is, as people become aware of all these owner's provisions, and as they become aware of all the changes in definitions, so that under the NDAA, if you are, somebody says, well, that person gave substantial support undefined to the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, or an associated group undefined, or committed a belligerent act undefined against the United States, or a coalition partner.
And those change all the time, don't they, Scott?
And as asserted by some smithers of some smithers that works for Obama, that nobody even knows and has no accountability whatsoever.
That's right.
It's really outrageous.
So we have these various groups that are working on this, the 10th Amendment Center, Campaign for Liberty, the Downsized D.C. Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and People Against the NDAA.
And we're young.
Dan Johnson has really put together, I think, a very effective group.
Networking.
I encourage everyone to investigate these groups and to join up.
And People Against the NDAA, they're growing now, and if you go like them on Facebook, that would be good.
But Dan's doing some tremendous work.
He's put together some great resources.
And we're working around the country in conjunction with the other groups and with the 10th Amendment Center.
And so I bring up the 10th Amendment because we're utilizing, and you've heard this because you've heard Tom Woods.
He wrote the book.
And you've heard, I'm sure, Michael Bolden and all the others explain this really wonderful concept in reality, which is Thomas Jefferson's rightful remedy.
When the people for whom these restrictions were written, that would be what they called back then the general government, that branch of the federal government, because it was supposed to be all federal, a constitutionally limited federal republic.
That's the idea here.
When those people, outside of the law, outside of the restrictions that are put on them, and when they do that, then their creator, their bosses were supposed to be the state.
You see that the general branch of the government is the agent of the state, and the states were the agents of the people.
And so the idea here that Jefferson and Madison and Patrick Henry and I think even Hamilton and Marshall actually expressed was this idea that if something is outside the bounds of that constitution, in terms of a law or executive edict or anything, it is not a law.
It is null and void.
It is of no effect.
And so what do we do to fight back against it?
As Tom Woods wrote it, we utilize nullification as our tool against tyranny.
And they did that in 1798 to protect freedom of speech.
When President John Adams started to take it away with the Alien and Sedition Acts and Jefferson went off to Kentucky and wrote the Kentucky Resolves and Madison went to Virginia and wrote the Virginia Resolves and Jefferson eventually came up with the word nullification to nullify what the feds are doing.
And one way to look at it is that we're nullifying the nullifier.
Somebody wrote it.
I don't remember if that was Michael Meharry or who wrote that, but it was a great point.
That's what we're doing.
And then Madison said interposition.
So the local or state unit would interpose between the people and the usurpers from the national capital.
And so that's what we're working on here, Scott.
And so there are both county resolutions that we're working with and also there are resolutions that are going forward in municipalities and then at the state level.
And you may have heard both Virginia and Arizona have passed noncompliance with NDAA bills.
In Virginia, eventually the governor of Virginia did sign the bill, which is a wonderful thing.
In Arizona, Governor Brewer unfortunately vetoed it.
I heard it was because of heavy pressure from Senator John McCain, if you could believe such a thing.
Yeah, of course he does.
Well, vetoes can be overridden, can't they?
Now I've got to tell you, well, just you on behalf of all these other people too, how proud I am of you guys because this is not, you know, the local Republican parties as taken over by Ron Paul people even.
These are just, you know, basically just libertarian groups banding together and having an incredible amount of influence over these politicians in these parties that your groups are not necessarily connected to.
And, you know, the thing about this is even my statement about how crazy, screaming guy on the sidewalk hyperbole actually rings true in this case or whatever, that kind of hyperbole really scares the hell out of people to even say that.
And really what we need here more than anything is exactly somebody like you going up there with that most professional and educated attitude and not being alarmist in manner or tone at all and yet somehow really being able to get through into the brains of these ridiculous political, you know, politician types just how serious this is that, you know what, this is one where you really absolutely have to take a stand because we might not get back from this kind of thing.
And so that's a very careful balance to strike.
I think, you know, you set a great example of how to do that.
And apparently, you know, these affiliated groups of yours too have already done an incredible amount of good.
Can you give us like a basic ballpark estimate how many different counties and municipalities and jurisdictions up there in Michigan you've already brought on board for this?
Because, again, to me, not again for the first time, I should say as a premise to my question, to me, a politician, usually especially like a city or a county politician type, they're totally just airhead poser, local celebrity type people that really don't know anything about anything, you know what I mean?
And so to be convinced to how dangerous something like this is, to appeal to their sense of real knowledge or wisdom is just, you know, that dog doesn't even hunt because they don't have any.
So, you know, how you've persuaded them to me is a very interesting topic.
Well, thanks, Scott.
Well, first I have to say, again, an encouraging note through this has been the development and the uncovery of more and more people who once they hear it and they read about it, they say, hey, this bothers me too.
And they really want to fight back against it.
And it's very pleasing to see the number of folks who on this issue and a lot of things particularly related to decentralization of government, you know, that we talk about at the Tenth Amendment Center and all those good folks over at the Forgotten Men show and Facebook page and all these founders of the American Revolution, the shiny law and all the gang.
And we're finding so many people, even that may not have been with us, for Dr. Paul, that are saying, hey, we're seeing it on these issues, where, hey, we agree on this and we agree on this.
We're just, again, building the coalitions.
Here locally in Michigan, we got over in Allegan County, a county commissioner named Bill Sage, and it was kind of an interesting story.
I was at a state convention as a Ron Paul delegate that was in May, and Bill was there and he's been working on something called Constituting Michigan and also Constituting America.
His idea is that we need to teach the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers and all those sort of things in the schools.
I saw Bill there and we were chatting and I brought up about the 10th Amendment Center.
I said, what do you think about that?
And he goes, oh, yeah.
And then I brought up NDAA and he was very interested.
He's been a real dynamo.
So we went to his county, Allegan County, which is between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, and I drove up there a couple of times and Bill organized and got together a bunch of the folks.
And he did some great work coming up with his resolution.
And as a county commissioner, he said, we have to do this.
And at the second meeting, we were able to get it through on an 8-3 vote in Allegan County, which is the first one in Michigan, and I believe it's the 16th or 17th situation in the country where we've had the success.
We are working on my own county here with the commissioners there, Oakland County, and we have a really outstanding county commissioner from the White Lake area named Jim Runstad.
And Jim is championing this for us in Oakland County.
And we've had a couple of general county commissioner meetings.
We've had a whole bunch of folks that have gone out there and spoken and explained what's going on and expressed what we needed to be done.
It's gone to committee because that's their procedure.
Then it goes to a committee.
And so on the 24th of September, we had a committee meeting, and I think we had like 25 or 30 folks that showed up to speak in defense of this or in support of Jim's resolution and explained just how bad this was.
Blake Filippi from Tenth Amendment Center was on the phone.
That was great.
And now I should say at that meeting, here's something I thought of as I listened to your earlier interview with Mr. Hagan and what you mentioned earlier.
There was a county commissioner, and this to me was very disappointing and astounding in a certain way if this person had been paying attention to what's been going on in terms of the fight for liberty and how it's, you know, particularly among Ron Paulians.
I mean, sometimes people in the Republican Party think we talk about it too much.
But this guy dared to say that we were bringing this up.
He thought, well, it sounds like a partisan political ploy.
And I thought of all the rotten things and so demonstrably untrue, and we're looking forward to the next meeting, which is coming up on October 8th, which is this next Monday, to explain to him the error of his thinking in that.
And I think Commissioner Runstead did a good job of pointing this out.
It's about principles.
And like you were saying in the earlier interview, we're not talking about, we're not letting any party off the hook or any politicians get away with anything or taking anybody unfairly.
We're just saying, hey, it's not personal.
It's philosophical.
And so we're working hard on that.
But so we're working on Oakland County.
Berrien County, which is right in the southwest corner of the state.
They're looking at this.
There's a good fellow named Ray Kirkus is championing it there, and I think Bill's going to help him over there.
We have other counties in the state.
In fact, we have two sheriffs, one of whom showed up in Allegan County for the second meeting, Sheriff Darley of Berrie County, which is between Grand Rapids and Lansing, I think.
So he spoke passionately.
And he, along with Sheriff Raines from Eaton County, have both been to Sheriff Mack's Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association meeting out in Las Vegas.
And Sheriff Leaf really understood this and really helped us to hammer home the point that the county sheriff is so important.
We need the local law enforcement.
We need to have a decentralized, and the sheriff is the protector of the people.
And so what we've been emphasizing in all these meetings, and Sheriff Leaf did a great job in Allegan County, is that we want our local government to be our shield, not the tip of Leviathan's spear.
And we're saying the same thing at the state level.
On the 25th, the day after the last county meeting, we went up to the Michigan Legislature, and at the Oversight Reform and Ethics Committee, chaired by Tom McMillan, who is a state rep from Auburn Hills and has done a lot of great work, he had a meeting, and Justin Amash, who has been really heroic on this, Justin Amash was there and he spoke and explained what was really at stake and what was going on.
And then Congressman Amash was joined by a lady named Shelley Weisberg, and she's the legislative director for the ACLU here in this state.
So again, the coalition you see coming together.
And then we had Tom McMillan estimated over 40 people were there.
Well, wait, hold that point for just a second.
I wanted to highlight that.
The lady from the ACLU came, and now are they officially part of y'all's coalition?
You're working with them?
At the state level, definitely, yes.
Because that's an extremely important thing, because obviously that's more the left, and you've got to get the Center for Constitutional Rights and all them working on your coalition, too.
That way everybody can say, a broad coalition.
Well, you're right.
In fact, a former high school classmate of mine is a state rep.
She's from Farmington Hills, Vicki Barnett.
She's a Democrat.
And Vicki and Tom and myself would probably vote differently on a number of different things.
But I've talked to her, and she agrees that this is really important.
And I'm glad that we have her support on this, too.
So like I say, it's bipartisan, transpartisan.
It's even nonpartisan.
The whole point is it's an American issue, not a partisan issue.
But Representative McMillan's meeting I thought went well.
There's going to be another committee meeting.
We need everybody on deck.
We need every man, and we need every woman, all the sons of liberty, and all the daughters of liberty to come together and help us accomplish this.
Because as you point out, if we can't win this one, this is the final line in the sand.
You look at the national surveillance state.
You look at all the NDA, all the administrative detentions that are going on, all the spying they're doing on us, all the depredations of our economic liberties, the destruction of the savers in this country, and all the wars they're creating, and all the dangers they're putting us at.
Just like these journalists at Freedom 7.
Scott, of course, I know you're familiar with that.
Chris Hedges and Naomi Wolf, I think Daniel Ellsberg are in that group.
Of course, yeah.
Yeah.
Are we safe if we just do investigative journalism to get information out to the American people?
Now, in a free country, there's personal privacy, right?
And there's government transparency.
That's the theory.
What we have in this country now is it's all secrecy and no privacy.
We've got plenty of the war and whistleblowers by Obama, like Glenn Greenblatt points out.
And these journalists were saying, hey, are we going to be safe?
Five times, Judge Forrest asked the government attorneys, would they be safe with their First Amendment protection for practicing their craft and giving the knowledge to the American people that they need to make decisions at election time and stuff like that, you see?
And never would the government attorneys affirm or deny.
They just would lift it wide open.
And he said, there are so many things here that are so vague, no specificity.
Everybody's at risk, just at the whim of a would-be dictator, and that's not the way it's supposed to be.
And that makes it, just on that outset, plus all the other problems that we mentioned earlier.
So, of course, she issued a temporary injunction.
She then said, give me definitions for these things that you say would get somebody a follow-up of the government in this legislation.
They couldn't do that, or they wouldn't do it.
And she said, well, that's it, permanent injunction.
Ron had said, remember, he signed this on New Year's Eve, which seems like a significant date, doesn't it, Scott?
Because we're all out partying, allegedly, or whatever.
So he's doing it when people are not paying attention.
But he signed it.
He said, I'm not going to use these powers, but he immediately appealed.
And he got a temporary stay on the 225th anniversary of Constitution Day, if you can believe it.
So the fight goes on.
It's got state and local resistance because, as the Forgotten Men say, you can't trust the deceivers.
There's a bunch of deceivers in power.
And as the Tenth Amendment Center says, you cannot correct the errors of the general government by utilizing them.
And as Woods and others have written, we've all read all this stuff.
And you've talked about it.
You've had a lot of people on yours.
We have a great group coming together that all realize this.
Another important point here is for my listeners to remember to not listen to me when I'm talking about how nobody cares all the time.
Because just because that's how I feel doesn't mean it's true at all.
And the fact that you guys are even listening is proof of that and the things that you do, you know, obviously.
So I'm sorry for being such a downer all the time and saying no one cares because, you know, just look at how powerful it can be.
If people just get together and they stay single-minded and determined on their highest priority like this, they can get a hell of a lot done.
You guys are doing it right in front of my eyes.
And thank you.
I appreciate your efforts on my behalf.
Now I've got to go because it's Ray McGovern's turn.
But thanks so much for your time on the show and all your great efforts.
Quickly tell everyone websites that they ought to look at for this effort to nullify the NDAA.
Right.
It would be what's at the amendmentscenter.com would be one.
PeopleAgainstTheNDAA.com is also known as PANDA.
That would be a great one.
Campaign for Liberty has got some good work on this at their websites.
Downsize DC has stuff on this.
Bill of Rights Defense Committee.
I think all of those are things that I would advocate that people look at.
And you go on Facebook, you can find these things.
And there's some tremendous work going on against this.
There's also a Facebook group.
I think it's One Billion Against Indefinite Detention done by the NDAA.
So there are a lot of different groups.
But People Against the NDAA and 10th Amendment Center and all these others are doing phenomenal work.
Okay, great.
Thanks so much for your time.
Good talk to you.
Thank you.
All right, so we'll be right back after this.
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