JULY 22, 2005 - Yearlong anniversary of House MPA vote
to remove jurisdiction from Supreme Court on DOMA
Today, July 22, is the yearlong anniversary of the 2004 vote by the US House
to pass the Marriage Protection Act (HR 3313, 108th Congress), removing
jurisdiction from the US Supreme Court and the lower federal courts over
cases concerning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed in 1996.
The MPA (HR 3313) passed by a vote of 233 to 194 in the US House on July 22, 2004, and then the Republican-majority US Senate "sat" on the bill for the rest of the 108th Congress (through early January 2005), until the bill died. Congress had the power to strip jurisdiction from the
U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal courts from cases concerning DOMA, protecting the institution of marriage from sodomites, and Congress still hasthe power to remove jurisdiction from the Supreme Court and lower federal courts today. Obviously, it has not been a priority for the Republican-majority Congress or the Republican President to do so - a year has gone by, and the MPA has not passed. (The President and Congress are more concerned with extending the unconstitutional Patriot Act and passing the sovereignty-stealing CAFTA bill (it's actually a treaty that should require a 2/3 vote in the US Senate, not just a majority vote in the House and Senate)).
THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS, BY A MAJORITY VOTE, HAS THE POWER NOW UNDER ARTICLE III., SECTION 2. OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION TO REMOVE APPELLATE JURISDICTION FROM THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, AND UNDER ARTICLE III. HAS THE POWER
TO EVEN ELIMINATE ANY OR ALL OF THE LOWER FEDERAL COURTS (let alone define their jurisdictions), AND SO COULD END U.S. SUPREME COURT AND LOWER FEDERAL COURT
INTERFERENCE NOWIN THE AREAS OF:
1. Abortion
2. Sodomy (crime of sodomy, and sodomite 'marriage')
3. Ackowledgment of God (prayer issues, Ten Commandments)
Yet the charade of the Republican-majority Congress and Republican President being pro-life, pro-marriage, and pro-God continues. The Congress and the President could END abortion in one week in America, if they wanted to, by passing the Right to Life Act, HR 552 (a bill which has been active in the US House for years
and years), with the addition of the court-jurisdiction-removal language contained in HR 3313, the Marriage protection Act, passed by the U.S. House, this day,
July 22, exactly one year ago!
(see link to HR 552 on homepage of
PRESIDENT BUSH and CONGRESS
COULD END ABORTION IN AMERICA IN ONE WEEK
Stop listening to National Right to Life, the Republican Party, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, et al.
who are leading God's people astray. Congress and the President have the power to
END ABORTION IN AMERICA NOW !!
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge:..." Hosea 4:6
"Where there is no vision, the people perish:..." Proverb 29:18
Author Paul Williams ("Osama's Revenge: the Next 9/11) claims the forces of Osama bin Ladin have in their hands numerous "suitcase" tactical nuclear bombs (on the order of a 10 kt yield"), have brought them over the insufficiently secured Mexican border, and are working toward setting off seven nuclear bombs simultaneously in seven different American cities, to bring about an "American Hiroshima."
Williams, Paul L. - author of 'Osama's Revenge'
Author: Al-Qaida Has Nuclear Weapons Inside U.S.
If this happens, it will be God's divine judgment for the national sin of abortion, the shedding of innocent blood, just as God used pagans to judge Judah and Jerusalem for their sins, including the sin of shedding innocent blood, in 605 BC, 597 BC, and finally, calamitously, in 586 BC (2 Kings 24:1-4). Time is running
out for a baby-killing, sodomy-tolerant, God-rejecting nation called America.
Repent Christians... Repent Church... Repent America.
Steve Lefemine, pro-life missionary
dir., Columbia Christians for Life
Columbia, SC
July 22, 2005
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Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 12:35:41 -0400
From: Columbia Christians for Life <>
Subject: US House passes Marriage Protection Act July 22 to limit jurisdiction of federal courts
US House passes Marriage Protection Act on July 22
to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts
Congress has the authority to limit the jurisdiction of the US supreme Court and the federal courts (which were created by Congress by federal statute in 1789), IAW Article III, Section 2
of US Constitution
What will the Republican-majority in the US Senate now do to protect the God-ordained covenant of marriage, now that the MPA has passed the US House on July 22 ?
Will the Republican-majority US Senate take up and pass the Marriage Protection Act (HR 3313)
in the US Senate also ? (see HR 3313 at
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The Washington Post
[highlighted emphasis added in article below]
Marriage Protection Act Passes
House Bill Strips Federal Courts of Power Over Same-Sex Cases
By Mary Fitzgerald and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A04
The House approved a bill yesterday to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over same-sex marriage cases, despite warnings by opponents that the measure is unconstitutional and would open the floodgates
for efforts to prevent judges from ruling on other issues, from gun control to abortion.
With strong backing from the Bush administration, the Marriage Protection Act was adopted 233 to 194. However, the bill is likely to face strong opposition in the Senate, where some Republicans joined with Democrats last week to block a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
GOP sponsors described the bill as a fallback measure that would prevent federal courts from ordering states to recognize same-sex marriages that are permitted by other states. The bill, drafted by
Rep. John N. Hostettler (R-Ind.), would prevent such a ruling by denying all federal courts, including
the Supreme Court, jurisdiction to rule on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act,
a 1996 federal law that says that no state has to recognize same-sex unions established in any other state.
Some social conservatives contend that it is only a matter of time before a federal court attempts to force the federal government or the other 49 states to recognize the same-sex marriages that Massachusetts began sanctioning in mid-May.
Republican House members argued on the floor that individual states should be allowed to defend their own marriage laws against unbridled judicial power.
"Lifetime-appointed federal judges must not be allowed to rewrite marriage policy for the states,"
Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) said.
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) declared that marriage "is under attack," referring to the Massachusetts state court decision permitting same-sex marriage. Sensenbrenner said the legislation is needed to prevent Massachusetts law from being imposed throughout the country.
"People who objected to the constitutional amendment said the definition of marriage is a matter that should be left up to the states. That's exactly what this bill does," said Hostettler's spokesman, Michael Jahr. "It means that Massachusetts can do what it wants, but what Massachusetts does cannot be imposed by a federal court on Texas or Indiana or California."
But the bill's congressional opponents, several constitutional scholars and a wide array of civil liberties groups called it a nearly unprecedented attack on the constitutional separation of powers among the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government.
Democrats accused the bill's sponsors of using the issue as a smoke screen before the national conventions and the run-up to the November election. "This bill is a mean-spirited, unconstitutional, dangerous distraction," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass).
"Instead of addressing the real concerns faced by American families, the leadership of this house has decided to throw its political base some red meat.
"They couldn't amend the Constitution last week, so they're trying to desecrate and circumvent the Constitution this week," he added.
In a letter to lawmakers this week, Chai Feldblum, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the last time that Congress passed a law stripping the Supreme Court of authority to hear a constitutional challenge was in 1868, when it feared that the court might invalidate the military Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War.
[CCL Note: This is actually incorrect, Congress passed court-limiting legislation in 2002:
"... bill supporters noted that Congress has stripped courts before, including in 2002, when it passed legislation pushed by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, that prohibited federal courts from hearing lawsuits challenging brush clearing in the Black Hills of South Dakota."
The Washington Times, June 25, 2004,
Page: A05, "GOP eyes taking marriage from courts". by Amy Fagan]
"When legislators rail that 'unelected judges' are finding legislative acts unconstitutional, they are attacking the very structure of our democracy," Feldblum wrote.
In recent decades, there have been calls for Congress to strip the courts of jurisdiction over numerous issues, including school desegregation, abortion and public displays of the Ten Commandments.
But none has passed. Whether the Supreme Court would agree that Congress has power to wall off
such areas is unclear, because the question has not been tested, scholars said.
Twenty-seven Democrats joined with 206 Republicans to pass the bill. Both Maryland Republican House members voted for the bill, and all the state's Democrats voted against it, while all Virginia Republicans and Democrat Rick Boucher voted for it, and the other Democrats voted no.
The American Civil Liberties Union noted that the vote fell well short of the two-thirds majority that would be required in the House to approve a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages. "It's time for the Republican leadership to stop messing around with the Constitution and get back to addressing the real problems that face real Americans," said Christopher Anders, ACLU legislative counsel.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Hallelu-Yah !
Steve Lefemine
dir., Columbia Christians for Life
Columbia, SC
God has already determined that in His universal, created order, the covenant of marriage shall only be between one man and one woman (Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 to 25).
As former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has faithfully stated publicly again and again, God's Law is the moral foundation of our human laws.
The 1776 Declaration of Independence states that the very premise of America's right to even exist was based upon "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God".
This document, the Declaration of Independence, sets forth the founding philosophy of the
United States of America, and remains today part of the organic law of the United States Code Annotated [federal law, which the US Constitution, Article VI, states is part of "the supreme Law of the Land", along with the US Constitution itself, and US Treaties; noticeably absent from the Constitution's list of the three things which are "the supreme Law of the Land" are supreme Court decisions. Decisions of the US supreme Court are NOT "the supreme Law of the Land" according to the US Constitution itself, in Article VI.]
[see (search “Declaration of Independence”)]
To see a compilation of evidences of Christian faith in early colonial charters and state constitutions, largely taken from William Federer's America's God and Country Encyclopedia Of Quotations, go to:
No King But King Jesus!
Declarations and Evidences of Christian Faith in America’s Colonial Charters,
State Constitutions, and Other Historical Documents over 375 Years of American History: 1606 to 1982