Critics of federal legislation to establish nationwide identification standards are tapping into religious groups to galvanize resistance to the statute.
The authors of a New Hampshire bill to make the Granite State the first to reject the so-called REAL ID Act have cited financial and constitutional concerns about its implementation. But several conservative Christian groups that have endorsed the New Hampshire proposal are largely motivated by their belief that the law is a sign of the apocalypse.
According to leaders of the movement against the statute, the cause has benefited immensely from the active participation of groups that view the law as the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy. Such groups refer to scripture that predicts that humans will be numbered by marks on their foreheads and hands before the arrival of the antichrist.
Katherine Albrecht, the founder of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, has lobbied extensively on behalf of the New Hampshire bill. She said religious groups have been valuable because they are highly mobile and well-organized.
Ervin (Butch) Paugh, a preacher and radio host in West Virginia who is running for governor on the Constitutionalist Party ticket, has been urging lawmakers in his state to follow New Hampshire’s lead. Joe Cicchirillo, a commissioner at West Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles, said he was impressed by Paugh’s knowledge of the issue when he met with him this month.
Read full article by Michael Martinez here.
Constitution Party Partisan Win
On November 2, 2004, Robert Miller, an activist in the Constitution Party, was elected County Surveyor of Grant County, West Virginia. He received ten write-in votes. No one else was running for the post.
From www.ballot-access.org.
WV Ballot Access Victory
On November 3, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, ruled that West Virginia may not charge a filing fee for declared write-in candidates. Phillips v Hechler, civ 6:00-894. The ruling upset a law that had been passed in 1993. The basis for the ruling is that the purpose of a filing fee is to keep a ballot from being crowded with too many names. That rationale has no application for write-in candidates.
The case was filed by Howard Phillips (Constitution Party presidential candidate), who was unable to qualify for the ballot, and who therefore depended on write-in votes in West Virginia. If the law had not been overturned, he would have had to pay $4,000 just to have his write-ins tallied (the fee is 1% of the annual salary of the office). The state has not yet said if it will appeal.
(From Ballot Access News.)
Meet Constitution Party's Howard Phillips
Candidate says GOP has ‘forfeited any claim on conservative support’
In California, it’s known as the American Independent Party. In Missouri, it’s the U.S. Taxpayers Party, and in Arkansas, the Conservative Party. But by whatever name, supporters of Howard Phillips for president believe they are the party of America’s founding fathers.
“We have to have a vision of victory,” he said. “We have to have a plan of winning. Ours is very simple: It is to reduce the federal government to the powers delegated to it by the states and enumerated in the complete text of the Constitution.”
Asked to explain the differences between Constitutionalists and other political parties, the candidate said the differences can be boiled down to each party’s “source of authority.”
Read full article by Julie Foster at WorldNetDaily.
Happy Birthday Paul Revere
Paul Revere (January 1, 1735 [O.S. December 21, 1734] – May 10, 1818) was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, Paul Revere’s Ride.
Revere was a prosperous and prominent Boston silversmith, who helped organize an intelligence and alarm system to keep watch on the British military. Revere later served as an officer in the Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous campaigns of the American Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame.