Moore Tea Citizens held their monthly dinner meeting at Russell's Restaurant in Southern Pines beginning at 5:30 PM on Monday, April 8, 2013. The MTC Chair, Dee Park, presided and "emceed" the meeting. This video is of the after-dinner speakers and activities.

Included are speeches from Jay DeLancy, Voter Integrity Project of NC and from Brant Clifton, The Daily Haymaker. Both of these speakers did an excellent job and held the audience' rapt attention. These patriots are doing heroic work to restore our nation and its prosperity.


Bill Cochrane

The left has emphasized a new tactic to discourage gun ownership and to penalize law-abiding citizens who value their Second Amendment rights.  The left has begun to argue that "high-capacity" magazines must be banned and outlawed.  They essentially argue that:

• The magazines allow too many shots to be fired too quickly, endangering too many people.  An outlaw shooter can "mow down" more people if he/she has larger magazines.
• Forcing smaller magazines would cause an outlaw shooter to stop to reload more often, allowing threatened bystanders to tackle and subdue him/her during the process of reloading the weapon.
• And you don't need that many bullets to protect yourself anyway.  "Why would you need more than six or seven bullets?", they ask.  "If you can't hit your target with that many, you should go back to the practice range...."

OK, let's take a moment to consider those arguments.  To keep this entry brief and concise, I'll begin with the last bullet (pun intended) above.

Let's put aside for the moment the facts and considerations that a citizen faced with a threat is likely to be surprised or even awakened by the attacker.  It may be dark.  There may be more than one attacker.  Things may move fast.  Most citizens are not extremely experienced and accurate sharpshooters.  They don't do this stuff for a living.

So, the "normal" citizen couldn't possibly match the aim, accuracy, experience level, and cool-headedness under high stress of a trained police officer....   Right?

Well, just how accurate are those police officers with their guns?  According to the NYC Police Department, their police officers hit the bad guy only 38% of the time when that bad guy is less than 3 yards away.  When the bad guy is 3 - 7 yards away, only 11% of fired shots will impact the bad guy somewhere on his body.  Increase the distance beyond 7 yards up to 15 yards away, and our public servant scores a hit only 9.4% of the time.  And keep in mind those hits might not even stop the bad guy.  You have to have a solid hit in a vital area to stop and disable.  A nick or flesh wound to an extremity won't do it.  Read the full report, if you're interested, here.  The NY Times reported that if the bad guy is really close -- less than six feet away -- the police manage to hit around 43% of the time.

OK.  So if our "normal" groggy or surprised and semi-panicked citizen is just as good as our highly trained law enforcement officers, our good fellow is going to miss the bad guy nine shots out of ten.  Hmmm.....  Six or seven bullets don't seem like such great odds any longer, do they?

What if there are two or three attackers?  You have to be a blind ideologue to continue to insist that 15 or 20 rounds is unnecessary for defensive purposes.  Those who are so insisting have no credibility with rational thinking persons.

Now for the first two bullets above....  I'm going to let Sheriff Ken Campbell of Boone County, Indiana, respond to those in the video below.  Sheriff Campbell clearly demonstrates that magazine limitations have little or no real effect on a shooter’s ability to deliver aimed fire.  And there is simply not enough time during reloading for a terrified bystander to attack and disable the shooter.  Any such attempt is probably suicidal, particularly if the shooter has multiple weapons.

Opponents of the Second Amendment should just drop all pretense.  We well understand what your goal is -- confiscation.  You will use any excuse, any lie, any pretense to accomplish confiscation.

Oh it won't happen?  Well, let's not even review the quotes of those in Congress who say otherwise....  Let's just point out that it has already happened in New Orleans.  And the municipal government in Guntersville, AL is moving to do the same thing -- in the next crisis....  And, as the news report below shows, these laws are already on the books in other towns -- all in the name of "safety", of course.

Ignore the fact that the police already have authority to arrest anyone -- armed or not -- who is threatening the safety of the police officers or other citizens.   They don't need such confiscation laws.  And when, exactly, do you most need your personal defense weapons?  Why, during a crisis/emergency/disaster OF COURSE!  That's when the police are the most overworked and cannot respond quickly.  That's when the chances are highest that lawless criminals will try to have their way with hapless citizens.  But that's when these evil rulers and overseers see their chance to finally implement their cherished confiscation.

It's really sickening to hear the mayor of Guntersville try to reassure the masses in her domain of her concerns for their well-being.  Why she would never try to take away their rights -- unless given the chance, of course.


Bill Cochrane
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Guntersville (Ala.) Mayor Leigh Dollar is working with city officials to pass an ordinance that would give police the power to “disarm individuals” during a disaster, a chilling example of how the second amendment is being assaulted via the back door.

The new rule would allow authorities to confiscate guns of “unruly” people during an extreme weather event such as the April 2011 tornadoes or any other emergency.  “The ordinance states officers could disarm individuals, if necessary", reports ABC 31.  “Dollar says the proposal is just way to give officers more authority to protect themselves.”

Dollar denied that the ordinance would be used to take away constitutional rights, but residents questioned why authorities would need to pass a new ordinance given that police already have the power to arrest citizens who are being “unruly”, whether armed or not.

“Well, it seems like an infringement on the 2nd Amendment and that’s the biggest problem I have with it”, said Guntersville Music Academy teacher Paul Landry.

Authorities are seemingly attempting to mirror unconstitutional gun grab powers that were enacted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  In the aftermath of Katrina, the New Orleans Police, National Guard troops, and U.S. Marshals confiscated firearms.  “Guns will be taken. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns”, New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass declared as he prepared to violate the Second Amendment.

The National Guard conducted warrantless house-to-house searches, targeting not just Hurricane-hit areas under the pretext of stopping violent looters, but also high and dry homes that were not even affected by the storm.  Authorities even confiscated pistols from old ladies, as documented in the video below.

The Guntersville gun grab ordinance will be on the city council agenda at their meeting on March 4th.


Paul Watson

A story this week on WRAL announced that Gov. Pat McCrory will seek federal funds to help the state "partner" in constructing "offshore energy" -- that's liberalspeak for "windfarms".  Our liberal Republican Governor has, for many, many years, been involved up to his neck in progressive radical environmentalist and U.N. causes, organizations and projects.  Even though he ran as a pretend conservative, it's really hard for an old zebra to change his stripes....

Windmill technology is finally becoming recognized for the wildly wasteful and impractical boondoggle that it really is.  In the past, wind farms have tied up enormous amounts of otherwise productive farmland or worse, denuded timberland.  Even genuine environmentalists who are actually concerned about the environment and not massive control agendas, are opposed to wind farms because they kill so many birds, they introduce noise that disrupts the wildlife and natural environment, they destroy habitat and natural beauty, and so on.  More energy is expended in the production of equipment, construction of the wind farm, and recurring maintenance than will ever be produced.  More toxic waste is produced and released during the production of these windmills and the massive battery installations which must accompany them than will be saved through the operational life cycle.

Drive up the Appalachian chain and you will find example after example of abandoned or mothballed windfarms dotted along the ridges.  Why?  Because each wind mill generator must be given a massive overhaul every five years.  There are huge stresses on the bearings and arms of these monsters.  The batteries will begin to weaken and fail after ten years or so of operation, and must thereafter soon be replaced.  This is why you will typically see a wind farm operate for roughly five or six years and then go mothballed.  The "green energy" firm has taken taxpayer subsidy to build the pink elephant, and then that firm milks the profits until the massive maintenance bills start pouring in.  Once the cream has been skimmed at taxpayer expense, the firm abandons the now worthless "investment" and applies for a new grant on a new project.  It's all a scam where some get rich or richer off our "collective" tax contributions.

It also happened extensively in the ethanol boondoggle.

These are simply the whimsical fantasies of naive minds -- or the corrupt connivance of nefarious men.

Well, if you think recurring maintenance costs are severe and impractical for a wind farm in the mountains, desert, or plains -- just wait until you see the wear and tear on wind mills constructed over salt water and subject to severe oceanic storms.  This harebrained scheme won't last half as long.  Just ask any homeowner on the coast how rough the sea environment is on his house, auto, and exposed equipment.

But common sense means nothing to liberal pseudo-environmentalists.  Gov. Pat loves big projects like "rapid rail" and "green energy" boondoggles.  Gov. Pat is just slightly less progressive than was his Democrat opponent.  He is Democrat-lite.  He was "the lesser of two evils" all over again.

And this mess demonstrates how much we need to reform the Republican Party.  It has become nearly identical so often to the Democrat-Socialist "New" Party.  I wish Gov. Pat would wise up, but he probably won't.

The hopelessly biased Carol Costello was rattled to the core yesterday when South Carolina sheriff Al Cannon gave her a lesson in Constitutional law.  He also exposed Costello for the blithering hypocrite that both she and most of the media are.

My guess is that Costello and her producers forgot that country doesn’t mean dumb.  Cannon's demeanor, intelligence, education, and command of the facts ran circles around the left-wing morning anchor.

But why is Carol Costello, of all people, upset with what Cannon is doing?  All he's doing is following President Obama's lead.  After all, it was Obama who set a new media-accepted precedent that says it's okay for him to decide when to uphold and enforce our nation's laws and when he will not do so.

Obama has openly and publicly stated -- to much media acclaim -- that he will not enforce certain parts of our immigration laws or the Defense of Marriage Act.  He doesn’t agree with those laws and therefore he will not enforce them.

Well, okay then.  Who knew you could do that?  I didn’t.  But now that Obama has shown us the way, I say it is racist not to follow his example.

Or…

Perhaps, there's a caveat when it comes to not enforcing laws you disagree with.

Perhaps, this is wrong if you’re not Obama?

Perhaps, this is wrong if Carol Costello and CNN like the law you’re choosing not to enforce?

Perhaps Carol Costello and CNN are a bunch of left-wing propagandists wholly on board the current Narrative Train that says Obama can do no wrong and his opponents can do nothing right?

And perhaps, because of that, because Obama is now in a bubble where the media hold him accountable for nothing and protect him from everything, our democracy is in all kinds of danger.


John Nolte

P.S. I'm looking for video of CNN and Costello's outrage when Obama actually broke the law regarding recess appointments. I'll let you know if any exists.
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John, I agree with what you've said.  However, I feel that it's vital to point out the major, extremely important difference between what Obama and Holder have done and what the good South Carolina sheriff is doing.  And there is a vitally important difference.

Obama and Holder choose which laws they will enforce and when they will enforce laws based on what they want to do -- based on their own agendas and how they "feel" about those laws.

The sheriff, on the other hand, says that he will base his decision on the Constitutionality of federal laws.  He says he will take into account what his state Attorney General says about the federal law/regulation and what legal opinions are coming from the judicial system.  And he will also take into account his own reading and understanding of the U.S. Constitution.  And only if the federal law or regulation is un-Constitutional will he refuse to enforce it in defense of, in this case, the Second Amendment.

There is a vast moral and ethical difference between those two examples.  The good sheriff is being ethical and principled.  The Administration is being exactly the opposite.

The sheriff took the following Oath of Office upon being elected to his position:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I am duly qualified, according to the Constitution of this State, to exercise the duties of the office to which I have been elected, (or appointed), and that I will, to the best of my ability, discharge the duties thereof, and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of this State and of the United States. So help me God."

He is again vowing to uphold his Oath of Office.  This is what an honest and honorable sheriff -- or any other elected official -- would do.

CNN Anchor Carol Costello should read and understand the Constitution herself.  First, the Second Amendment protects our right to bear arms.  Article 1, Section 8 lists the specific areas where the federal government has authority to make laws and regulations.  There is nothing in Article 1, Section 8 which gives the federal government authority to regulate individuals' possession or use of their arms.  Amendment 10 reserves to the states or to the People all other rights and authorities not specifically granted to the federal government.

All of the new proposals being floated in our out-of-control federal government are un-Constitutional.  Lawyers and appointed judges don't have authority (look at Article III of the Constitution) to reinterpret the clear and concise words of the Constitution.

Thank God for good men like Sheriff Al Cannon!


Bill Cochrane

I suppose when you're in a government which yearns to be a dictatorship... A government which has succeeded in making the Constitution irrelevant...  One which has succeeded in trivializing and circumventing Congress...  One which is dedicated to transforming the nation into something that it has never been and was never imagined to be...  I suppose one then begins to consider any dissenting opinion as something which must be squelched.  A person with dissenting opinions must be marginalized, targeted, and isolated.  Such people must be maligned so as to set up for their eventual re-education -- or if that is not successful for the necessary political purges to begin.

No, I'm not feeling paranoid.  I'm reading the news and the new report on terrorism produced by our Homeland Security Department.  And, according to the study and these reports (e.g. this one and this one), I and all my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances are terrorists now!

It just goes to show:  You never know what distinctions you can achieve, even if you're not aspiring to them!


Bill Cochrane

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

Thomas Jefferson

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."

James Madison

“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”


John Marshall

"The foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained..."


George Washington

"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America."

                                James Madison

"A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering… And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."

Thomas Jefferson

My article on the Supreme Court ruling below upholds these principles.  We now have an unlimited government with unlimited power to tax.  Thank you Supreme Court.  Thank you Progressives.  Thanks to all who have compromised or abandoned principles.  Our Constitutional Republic appears doomed unless the people change themselves, awaken, and demand principled and virtuous candidates.


Bill Cochrane

Regular visitors here may have noted my "absence" for the past couple of days.  A number of us traveled to Raleigh early Thursday morning to be at the Legislature when the Supreme Court announced its decision on Obamacare.  We all had our individual expectations of what might be announced, and mine were certainly limited in optimism.

But none of us were prepared for what we heard.  We were completely "blown away".  I came home in a deep depression, and until this morning, I simply could not bring myself to do anything except listen to the media pundits and "experts", read the articles and blogs, and listen to talk radio.... searching, hoping, yearning for some "silver lining", some "ray of hope" that I had missed.

Oh, people have tried to find such.  And for a brief moment yesterday I was tempted to accept some of those propositions.  But their propositions are all false arguments.  They are based only on political rationalizations, on speculation of ulterior strategies on the part of Justice Roberts, and on specious interpretations of Supreme Court interpretations which are, themselves, un-Constitutional.  And now I'm angry.  More angry than I've ever been in my entire life.  All of our institutions have now failed.

In short all of the arguments made to defend the decision, to defend Justice Robert's statements in the ruling, to paint silver on the seamy twisted logic -- all of it is based on a lack of principle.  And unprincipled behavior is poison to governance and to our rights and liberties.  Let me explain.

1.  A Tax?  The Court was completely unprincipled here.  To begin with, this was the first question addressed by the Court during the hearings and oral arguments.  Because the Government was arguing that the individual mandate was not a tax, the Court even hired an independent outside attorney to make the oral argument that the penalty associated with the individual mandate was, indeed, a tax permitted to Congress under the Constitution.  Why would the Court do this?  Answer:  They had to do this.  You see there is a 19th century law which applies:  The Anti-Injunction Act.  That law states that a federal tax cannot be challenged in court until it has been collected.  Since this part of ObamaCare will not be implemented until 2014, no penalty/tax has been "collected".  Therefore, if the fines associated with the individual mandate were adjudicated as a tax, the Supreme Court would have no option, under rule of law, but to throw the case out until 2014.  But everyone wanted the case adjudicated now, not in 2014; therefore, the Court accepted the Government's argument that the fines were not a tax.

So, by ultimately ruling that the fines are a tax, Justice Roberts and the Court violated federal law themselves.  How can we place any faith on a Court which will willingly and knowingly violate law?  We cannot.  This behavior was completely unprincipled.


2.  What kind of tax?  Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants to Congress the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises....".  However, neither the Framers nor the Nation nor the Courts ever held this power to be unlimited.  Indeed, it required an amendment to the Constitution -- the Sixteenth Amenment -- to authorize Congress to levy personal income taxes for the first time back in 1913.

By allowing the Government to now levy a tax on inactivity, the Court essentially removed all Constitutional limits on taxation.  The Government may now levy any kind of tax for any reason on anyone for any activity or inactivity.  This Court has expanded the powers of Congress to infinity, limited only by the political process.  This renders the Constitution essentially meaningless and useless as a constraint on government power.  Congress already thought they had loopholes for unlimited power through the Commerce Clause and through the tortured and twisted "interpretations" of the "welfare clause" -- now they have yet another route to infinite unlimited power fully granted and blessed by the Supreme Court.  How can such a Court claim to be "protecting and preserving the Constitution of the United States"?  It cannot.


3.  Speaking of interpretations....  There is nothing in Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution which grants the Supreme Court any powers to "interpret" or "re-interpret" the Constitution.  Nothing.  This is a Progressive Lie which has been accepted by too many ignorant, unthinking people and by too many of the sitting justices on the Court.  The Constitution is not a "living" "liquid" document which can be "re-interpreted" to "fit" "new ideas and problems".  This Progressive technique is exactly why Obama scolded George Stephanopoulos for using a dictionary during that 2009 interview where Obama insisted this was "not a tax".  Progressives and socialists do not like dictionaries.  Dictionaries state the meaning of words.  Words must mean something; meanings are important.  But meanings get in the way of Progressives.  Progressives constantly come up with new meanings of their own for words in order to hide and conceal their real intent and purpose.  So, Obama hates the dictionary and scolds George for even bringing it up.

Well, the Supreme Court and Justice Roberts engaged in the same behavior in rendering this terrible ruling.  They not only "re-interpreted" the Constitutional language having to do with taxes, but they "re-interpreted" the language of the ObamaCare act as well.  The Court twisted the words of both documents as well as the legal arguments brought before them to (by their own admission) find a way to rule the act "constitutional".

This, again, is unprincipled behavior.  It is akin to the concept of "situational ethics".  If the words of the Constitution and of acts of Congress can mean anything when convenient to "re-interpret" them, then those words actually mean nothing at all.

4.  But Justice Roberts put a new limit on the Commerce Clause....  Really?  Did he?  Where is that limit?  Firstly, the Court did not reverse Wikard vs. Filburn.  So, the Court left standing the perversion that the government can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause.  The Court did not roll back any of the regulatory powers that the federal government has imposed under the Commerce Clause within intra-state commerce.  All this Court basically said was that the Commerce Clause did not apply in this instance.  That did not change past precedents whatsoever, really.  To argue that it did is a vapid stretch and really nothing more than the kind of "hopeful thinking" to which so many succumbed back in 2008.

The complete and utter perversion of the Commerce Clause in Section 8 remains in effect along with the un-Constitutional concept of court "precedents" which have accomplished that perversion.  This again, is unprincipled behavior.  And to argue that Justice Roberts "sneaked one over" on the liberal justices to somehow limit the now-unlimited scope of the simple little Commerce Clause is completely a "red herring".  Besides, if he did attempt to "sneak one over" by joining with the liberals in upholding ObamaCare, simply to be able to write a majority opinion that somehow limited the perversion of the Commerce Clause, is such sneaky behavior worthy of a Supreme Court Justice?  I would say it is, again, unprincipled behavior.


5.  Justice Roberts cited former Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:  “As between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the act.”  Must I say anything more about duplicitous "interpretations"?  Justice Roberts went on to say:  "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

Well, is it the "job" of the Supreme Court to re-write legislation?  To uphold anything that Congress passes?  To "protect the image" of the Court.  No, no, and no!  Those on the Court were granted lifetime tenure and shielded from political and legal liabilities in order to protect them.  They need no further protection -- they certainly do not need to render convoluted rulings to assuage the ire of some in the other branches.  And their job was designed to be a check and balance on the abuse of power by the other branches --- NOT to find a way to "interpret" the act or Constitution so as to rubber-stamp the will of an out of control Congress.

The job of the Supreme Court IS (was) to uphold their Oath -- to preserve, protect, and uphold the Constitution.  Instead, this Court has done irreparable damage once more to the Constitution.  The Framers intended the federal government to have the 18 enumerated powers listed in Article 1, Section 8.  The Framers intended a limited government.  The Supreme Court has now granted the Congress and Administration at least three unlimited plenary ways to seize new powers.  This is the opposite of what the Constitution was designed and intended to do.  If the words of the Constitution can be so wildly "interpreted", then those words mean nothing.  If the government now has unlimited powers, then the Constitution means nothing.  The Progressive goal of making the Constitution irrelevant has finally been achieved with the help of this Court.

As Rush Limbaugh put it:  "There are now no limits anywhere on the size, scope, the growth of government."  As Colorado's Attorney General, John Suthers, says:  "Whatever limits remain on Congress's power will now be left to the political arena.  If our liberty is dependent on the voters, history has proven that little stands in the way of further encroachments on individual and state rights."   As Senator Lindsey Graham responded to an reporter's question:  "How do you hold the President accountable, Senator?" Graham responded:  "It's called an election."

The Court surrendered its role in checks and balances.  The Court abdicated its responsibility to protect the people from government overreach.  Now the self-appointed role of the Supreme Court is to find ways to uphold unconstitutional laws and regulations.  This is unprincipled behavior.


But it is not only the three branches of government who have abandoned principles and failed.  The media has failed in its role to be a check on the government and a purveyor of the truth and facts.  Our schools have abandoned principles of education in favor of bureaucracy, employee benefits, political ideology, and indoctrination.  Our culture is riddled with unprincipled and unscrupulous behaviors.

An unprincipled populace is ungovernable except by force.  This is why our institutions and our Constitution have failed.  Our populace is generally unprincipled, and their representatives and institutions merely reflect the people.  John Adams said:  "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  So, our unprincipled behavior creates a populace which can only be governed by force -- which is why we are quickly transforming into a totalitarian state -- a dictatorship.

We are close to dictatorship.  We must now resort to the purely political arena to preserve any vestige of our once-great Constitutional Republic.  We have one more chance this November to pull back from totalitarianism.  Considering the ignorance, apathy, greed, and misguided ideologies among the electorate, that is a very slender thread upon which our nation dangles.  If the electorate get it wrong this year, or if those we elect again betray us, we will become either serfs in a poverty-struck proletariat or revolutionaries in a desperate last-ditch bid for our freedom.



Bill Cochrane