I was, quite honestly, taken aback by all the comments in response to my last article. I suppose I should have expected it, but nonetheless it came as quite a surprise considering the title I had given it. Thinking back I guess a more suitable title would have been Prequel to a Hiatus, as I am not going anywhere, I am just not going to be writing any more commentaries for a while.

Lately, at work, I have had to suppress the desire to perform shotgun lobotomies upon an ever increasing number of people. Yesterday was no worse than any other day, but I guess I was just venting some steam, and some of my anger and frustration spilled over into my writing; hence the title. It was a mistake on my part, and I am sorry for misleading my readers.

I do intend to devote my time to writing a book, but that is something I have always wanted to do, and in fact it is something some of you may recall I had started working on previously. Some may remember my Constitution 101 series, as that will form a part of the work I intend to occupy myself with in the upcoming months.

That being said, I find it amusing that more attention was given the title of my last article, rather than the content. That is something that I wish hadn’t happened because there was a point I tried to get across that I consider to be of great importance.

Since this WILL be my last commentary for a while, I would hope that you will allow me to reiterate that point I wanted to get across in my previous article.
It is a given that government, at whatever level it exists, has as part of its duty, the enacting of laws. When these laws are enacted there is a penalty attached for disobedience. That penalty may be a fine, or it may be imprisonment, it all depends upon the seriousness of the crime.

Our nation’s Constitution is THE law which governs the actions of our government; it is the supreme law of the land. Yet there are no penalties attached to be imposed upon those who break that law.

From your local police department, all the way to the federal government, there are armed enforcers of the law who can detain, imprison, and even kill you, should you violate the laws that government imposes upon YOU. Yet there are no such agencies to do the same to those elected officials who violate their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. Why is that?

Since I am from California, allow me to give you an example as to what I mean. Say a group of Californians, armed to the teeth like a SWAT team, were to storm into the office of Diane Feinstein and arrest her for breaking the law, in this case the law being the Constitution. What do you think would happen? You know the answer to that question as well as I do, they wouldn’t get past the front door without being shot and killed. Yet our founders believed that all governmental power stems from a grant of authority by the people. Therefore if the people themselves cannot enforce the law upon our elected officials, does that mean that they are above the law? If not, then who, may I ask, is going to provide us with justice when they break it?

That is the point I wanted people to consider in my last article, and I am sorry that my choice of title deflected their attention away from this crucial question. I am not going to throw in the towel, call it quits. I could not quit writing any more than I could will my nerve endings to stop sending signals to my brain. It is just that I truly want to see if I can finish a project I started over a year ago.

Hopefully that explains my comments in a manner that settles your mind and answers any questions you may have had about my reason for titling my last article the way I did. Until you hear from me again, keep the faith…

June 15, 2011

Neal Ross