Judging Freedom - Breaking News - Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alec Baldwin

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, February 20th, 2023. It's about four o'clock in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Sometimes I agree with her. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes she's a little much, sometimes she's great. I came out with a very interesting statement earlier today arguing that states should be able to secede from the union. I've been making this argument since I first studied the Constitution and constitutional history back as an undergraduate, even before I went to law school. Let me read to you in a full screen exactly what she said, and then I'll analyze it for you. Here she is. We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this, from the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrats'

traitorous America last policies, we are done. Okay. Democrats are not traitors. They can offer whatever legislation they want. That's an extreme statement, but I understand hyperbole. However, on the idea of seceding from the Union, this was obviously intended by Madison when he wrote the Constitution and intended by Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. How did America come about when the 13 colonies seceded from Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence itself makes out an argument that when the central government no longer represents the best interests of one of the geographic areas over which it has dominance, and when the central government is crushing the

liberties of people who live in that geographic area, it is the right and the duty of that geographic area to elect a government that will withdraw from the central government. In other words, secede. So the first act of secession actually was argued in 1798. What happened then? That's when the Congress, the Federalist Congress, the big government Congress under the Federalist big government President John Adams, the second president of the United States. Jefferson was his vice president because in those days everybody ran for president. Whoever finished first became president. Whoever finished second became vice president. They didn't even speak for the four years they were in office because they disagreed on everything. The Federalist Congress enacted and John Adams signed into law the Alien

and Sedition Acts. Those abominable laws permitted prosecutions for people who criticized the government. And indeed, people were prosecuted for criticizing the government and were put in jail, including famously Congressman Matthew Lyons, a sitting member of Congress who mocked the president's waistline and thereby criticized him outside the halls of Congress, was not protective of the speech and debate laws, was incarcerated, and eventually when Jefferson became president was pardoned. Back to 1798, Jefferson was vice president. Madison was a member of Congress from Virginia. Madison had authored the Constitution and had authored the Bill of Rights. When the Alien and Sedition Acts were written, the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky

enacted legislation nullifying the Alien and Sedition Acts in those states and threatening to secede from the Union. Who secretly wrote those resolutions? The Virginia, secretly written by James Madison. The Kentucky, secretly written by Thomas Jefferson. It is clear that the author of the Declaration of Independence and the author of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights understood those documents to reflect a natural inherent right to leave the government. If you're a libertarian, if you're a small government person like I am, then you believe that one of your natural rights is the right to leave, and you can leave with your neighbors, and you can leave with the geographic and political subdivision in which you live,

village, town, county, region, or state. When the southern states seceded from the Union, they believed they had an absolute constitutional right to do so, that they were defending slavery was reprehensible. Nothing worse in our history has happened than the purported ownership of human beings as property. But we're not talking about that today. We're talking about states which have voluntarily joined the union by a simple act of legislation, voluntarily leaving. They have that inherent right. Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene on this issue was 100% correct. I don't expect this to go anywhere, but I would love to see it do so. Supreme Court has never ruled on this. There's an opinion called Texas versus the United States, in which the Chief Justice gave what's called dicta, that's just his own opinion, not relevant to the resolution of the case, that no state can

leave without the consent of three quarters of the others. But that's hogwash, that's just made up out of thin air. There's no statute, there's no principle, there's no law, there's no constitutional doctrine that stands for that. If the authors of the founding documents understood that those who detested what central government did and recognized its destruction of human liberty can leave, that's good enough for Congresswoman Taylor and it's good enough for me. We'll see where this goes. Breaking news this afternoon in the Alec Baldwin case. Your humble correspondent has talked about this earlier. Alec Baldwin was charged with two counts of manslaughter, one simple manslaughter, which is the use of a dangerous instrument with reckless disregard for the life of the person killed. It could be an automobile, it could be a golf club, it could be a baseball bat. In this case, it was a gun that he says he thought was filled with blanks. That charge carries a maximum of 18 months in prison, but the presumption is if the defendant has no prior criminal record, and I don't believe Alec Baldwin does,

that there will be no prison time. The second charge was reckless disregard for human life involving a gun. That charge requires five years minimum mandatory in jail. The problem was that that didn't become law in New Mexico until after the incident on the set of Rust, where Alec Baldwin apparently squeezed a trigger. There he is on his phone shortly after the event. And as a result of that, one of his producers was killed. The Constitution itself prohibits ex post facto laws. Those are laws that were enacted after the events that they purport to criminalize. Why is that in there? Because kings of England did it all the time to their political opponents. You said something on Monday. Okay, on Wednesday, we're going to make what you said on Monday a crime and prosecute you.

You can't do that in the United States. Madison, who as we know wrote the Constitution, did not want to repeat the same horrors of crushing individual liberty here that had happened to colonists by the British Parliament and even to people in England by the British Parliament. So the Constitution prohibits the retroactive effect of criminal statutes known as ex post facto, after the fact statutes. When Alec Baldwin's defense counsel pointed this out to the prosecutor, she initially said, no, no, no, you're wrong. Then she realized they were right without even waiting for a judge to rule on it. Just two hours ago, around lunchtime today, she asked the judge to dismiss those charges. So Baldwin now faces just one charge, simple manslaughter, maximum time in jail, 18 months. The presumption upon conviction for the sentencing judge, same as the trial judge, is no time in jail.

More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll be right back. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.