Mr. President! Free Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean!

Mr. President! Free Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean! Please join fellow GOPUSA activists in petitioning President Bush for a full pardon for Agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos.

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Five years ago, when the smoking ban in restaurants first went into effect in my home state of Connecticut, I told a few folks who were happy about it, that it was only a matter of time before the government came after their private property rights or other issues that were near and dear to their hearts. Most people scoffed at my defense of the restaurant owners' property rights and one fellow actually said, ""The problem with you people is that all you care about is the Constitution."

Of course, the ensuing years only saw more government intrusion and some shocking court decisions eat away at the liberties of a proud, freedom-loving people. The case that most disturbed my liberal friends was the U.S. Supreme Court's shocking 2005 decision in Kelo v. New London, which essentially eviscerated the Fifth Amendment's proscription against depriving citizens of their private property except for "public use."

Now, when I repeat my warnings that, with liberals in power, no one's rights are safe, I hear little or no argument at all. And the fellow who chastised me about the Constitution has since actually read the eight-page document and is now a proud conservative who joins me in castigating those still in denial.

Yet, while I bemoan the liberal goings-on in my once liberty-loving state, I only have that much more empathy for the many good people of California, who also have a RINO governor, but labor under the 'leadership' of a much worse regime. This week's outrage concerns the ruling of an appellate court that "parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children" and that those who do so might be subject to severe penalties.

Now the judges in this case may actually have a legal leg to stand on, given that California really has no concrete provisions either for or against homeschooling on the books, but of course, that is not really the issue at hand. That more and more parents are taking direct responsibility for the raising of their own children is naturally troubling to the proprietors of the Nanny State.

The father in the case said (web site) that he withdrew his children from the public school system because, ""We just don't want them teaching our children. They teach things that are totally contrary to what we believe." This is an affront to those who would wean our children on their secular, socialist agenda. Here is the real kicker from Judge H. Walter Croskey, writing the unanimous opinion (emphasis mine): (web site)

The parents in the instant case have asserted in a declaration that it is because of their "sincerely held religious beliefs" that they home school their children and those religious beliefs "are based on Biblical teachings and principles"... [T]hose assertions are not the quality of evidence that permits us to say that application of California's compulsory public school education law to them violates their First Amendment rights. Their statements are conclusional, not factually specific. Moreover, such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to home school his or her child.

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