RONALD D. RAY

COUNSELLORS AT LAW

3317 HALL'S HILL ROAD

CRESTWOOD, KENTUCKY 40014-9523

(502) 241-5552 ......Cable/Victory.............................. Fax (502) 241-1552 .....Email ffp@iglou.com

MEMORANDUM

Independence Day, July 4, 2000

FROM: Colonel Ronald D. Ray

RE: "Government by Judiciary" Censoring & Rewriting American History Judicial Restriction of The Declaration of Independence & Congressional Record

I appreciate this opportunity to update you on a quiet political revolution that just surfaced in Kentueky and promises to reach out and touch the entire nation. A Clinton-appointed federal judge, Jennifer Coffman has issued an unprecedented order censoring the public display of the following official documents from the permanent history of American civil government:

. An excerpt from The Declaration of Independence;

· America's National Motto "In God We Trust"adopted by Congress on July 20th, 1956;

· The Preamble to the Constitution of Kentucky; ·

. The Mayflower Compact establishing the first "civil body politic" on November 11, 1620; ·

. The Congressional Record of February 2, 1983 carrying a Congressional request to the President to make 1983 the Year of the Bible which also contained a specific version of the Ten Commandments as the "precedent legal code upon which American law and civil government was based;"

· And, three Presidential Proclamations, two by Abraham Lincoln the only U.S. President born in Kentucky and President Ronald Reagan's Proclamation of 1983 as the "Year of the Bible" dated February 3'd 1983. l

The judge's unprecedented restrictions on The Declaration of Independence; the Congressional Record and official documents from the permanent history of American civil government is a political strike upon America's foundations! For the first time since British soldiers were burning and striking down The Declaration of Independence and seeking to hang the signers during the American War for Independence in the 1770's, there's never been any hint that public displays of The Declaration of Independence are objectionable in any way to any real American or any American institution particularly became of references to "God," the "Creator," etc. The judiciary never before questioned the patriotism of anyone posting the above documents.

Too many civic and church leaders misunderstand the nature of these documents. They are not religious or church documents, but the official documents from the permanent history of American civil government and the "precedent legal code upon which American Law and Civil government are based." Statesmen wrote these official documents, not churchmen, to under gird American law and the civil government. Yes. America does separate the government of church and the government of the state, but at the foundation of both institutions, the church and the state, !ay the Ten Commandments and the

1( To review the order or for more information about Judge Coffman's extraordinary May 5, 2000 ruling see www.firstprinciplespress.org or call us at the above number).

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Bible. That fact made America "one nation under God" and this is what riles up revolutionaries who want to alter America's foundations by striking the Republic's early history.

THE REMEDY FOR POLITICAL ACTIVISM BY THE JUDICIARY LIES WITH CONGRESS

Only Congress can take action to respond to this unconstitutional extension of political authority by a federal judge. The U.S. Constitution requires (Article I, Section 5) the keeping and distributing of Official Debates and Proceedings of the Congress of the United States to WE THE PEOPLE. The "supreme Court" and "inferior Courts" lack any jurisdiction to censor, suppress or restrict the people's absolute right to know about the public acts of their elected representatives in the Congress. The judiciary's usurpation of Congressional authority is nothing less than "Government by Judiciary" as Harvard Professor Raoul Burger called it in his important 1977 book about the unconstitutional transformation of the 14th Amendment.

Censorship of the Declaration of Independence, our "national birth certificate," has occurred as July the 4th, 2000 came and went without public outcry. Americans do not yet understand the significance of this escalation in the political revolution through the federal courts to eradicate the American Republic's founding history. To my knowledge, there has never even been an argument by an ACLU lawyer in any State or Federal Court, which has been willing to entertain the un-American notion that posting our Declaration of Independence in a public building or public school is offensive or illegal.

Liberty demands that there be no such political censorship of the official documents revealing the foundation of our civil government. Yet for the first time a judicial activist somehow finds a First Amendment legal/constitutional "religious problem" with the Declaration of Independence because she says it somehow in the year 2000 engages the "religion clauses" of the First Amendment, This is absurd! And many leading conservative attorneys agree.

This action in Kentucky characterizes the judiciary's emerging unconstitutional role as America's "spiritual overseers" administering a new Liberal Theocracy, which must be opposed most strenuously. I have briefed and provided educational materials to Senators Jim Burming, Mitch McCormell and leading members of the House of Representatives Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) and Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.). I discussed with each one or their senior staff an appropriate response including the possibility of introducing a bill under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states that:

"in all other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."

Congress has the authority to restrict the jurisdiction of the "supreme Court" and the other "inferior Courts" as might be appropriate with regard to any other further efforts to censor, suppress or restrict The Congressional Record or The Declaration of Independence.

PATRIOTISM & AMERICAN HISTORY: AGAINST THE LAW?

History teaches that land grant colleges and universities were created and funded by the U. S. Congress in every state of the union to house copies of the official documents of the federal government to ensure the people's absolute right to know about the public acts of the Congress, to have access to the U.S. supreme Court opinions and to the public proclamations and official acts of the President of the United States. The action of Judge Coffman in her unprecedented ruling seeks, for the first time, to legalize censorship of America's founding history and limit WE THE PEOPLE'S right to know.

Columnist Tony Snow's recent article on Stockport College in England relates how this institution has decided to "teach tolerance" by expelling students who utter offensive terms including

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"history." In the college's view, history has become politically incorrect. It seems the elite here and abroad find history repugnant. Dr. Millard's "The Rewriting of American History" and the historic works by David Barton extensively document the removal of America's founding history from schools and public life.2

The removal and rewriting of American History has been a political objective of the ACLU, the NEA, and other revolutionary groups for decades. The November, 1967 edition of the national NEA Journal put it this way:

Probably the most obvious change occurring in the social studies curriculum is a breaking away from the traditional dominance of history, geography, and civics. Materials from the behavioral sciences.., sociology, social psychology.., are being incorporated into both elementary and secondary school programs.

The elected Kentucky officials in McCreary, Pulaski, and Harlan County were following the law, but have been subjected to an essentially un-American as well as unconstitutional order by Judge Coffman. As I indicated, for example, every U.S. Court of Appeals that has considered many ACLU attacks on the National motto "In God We Trust" has rejected that attack. This ruling and the ACLU arguments are essentially against the law. See Aronow v. United States, 432 F.2d 242 (9th Cir. 1970); O'Hair v. Murray, 588 F.2d 1144 (5th Cir.), cert. Denied, 442 U.S. 930 (1979); Gaylor v. United States, 74 F.3d 214 (10th Cir.), cert. Denied, 517 U.S. 1211 (1996); ACLUof Ohio v. Governor of Ohio, et. al., Electronic Citation: 2000 FED App. 0148P (6th Cir.). The U.S. supreme Court has never questioned the conclusion reached in these decisions.

THE BATTLE IS OVER THE HISTORY OF

"ONE NATION UNDER GOD" V. COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS

More than 86 percent of Kentuckians support a legal and proper way to restore the Ten Commandments in public buildings. Stone v. Graham, the supreme Court case out of Kentucky which caused many to remove the Ten Commandments from schools, actually provided that the Bible and the Ten Commandments "may be constitutionally integrated into school curriculum, when used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like." The ACLU, NEA, National Council of Churches, The Lucis Trust, the mainstream Media, etc., and their fellow travelers want to teach "comparative religions," but oppose the teaching of "history" which reveals the vital role Christianity, the Ten Commandments and the Bible played in the founding of our system of justice and civil government.

The 2000 Kentucky General Assembly rejected teaching "comparative religions" and endorsed the teaching of American "history" from original official documents by passing S JR 57 which concluded:

Section 7. The General Assembly finds the Ten Commandments to be the precedent legal code of the Commonwealth which has provided the foundation for many of the civil and criminal statutes enacted into law throughout the history of the Commonwealth.

Despite the fact that the vestiges of patriotism and our past are quickly vanishing, American "history" still reflects its founding as a nation whose motto is "IN GOD WE TRUST." What has surfaced in Kentucky is not at all a First Amendment contest between the establishment of religion versus the free exercise clause; rather it's the bald political censorship of the official and permanent history of our civil government because of its Christian roots. Our adversaries know that victory here is possible only if we continue to confuse patriotism and America's founding history with "church" and "religion."

2 Copies of books and materials mentioned available through the website www.firstprinciplespress.org

COLONEL RONALD D. RAY

Colonel Ray was bom in Hazard, Kentucky on October 30, 1942. He received his B.A. from Centre College of Kentucky in 1964, and his juris doctorate, Magna Cum Laude, in 1971 from the University of Louisville School of Law, where he was Salutatorian in his class and an Editor of the Journal of Family Law. Colonel Ray was a Partner with Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald for 15 years, and until 1986 headed the Labor and Employee Relations section of the firm. Colonel Ray was Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Louisville School of Law for many years.

In 1964, Colonel Ray was commissioned in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as a Platoon Leader and one of the first Marine officers ashore for the evacuation of civilians during the Dominican Republic Crisis in April-May, 1965. Colonel Ray later served as an Infantry Battalion Advisor to the Vietnamese Marine Corps in the Republic of Vietnam during 1967-68, participating in combat operations throughout South Vietnam including major joint operations during the TET Offensive, Hue City, Coronado II and Paddington. During his active military service, Colonel Ray was awarded many decorations, including two Silver Stars for gallantry, Bronze Star with Combat "V", Purple Heart, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and Vietnamese Honor Medal.

Colonel Ray resigned his active commission in 1969 and joined the Marine Corps Reserve, where he held a variety of command and staff positions, including command of combat and combat service support units in Louisville and Ft. Knox, Kentucky. In 1974, he was certified as a Staff Judge Advocate, and graduated with honors from the Naval justice School in Newport, Rhode Island, and attended many senior level military schools, the NATO Defense College in England and the National Defense University. He served as Deputy Director for Field Operations for the Division of History and Museums of the Marine Corps. Colonel Ray retired from the Marine Corps Reserve on June 30, 1994, and he is currently working on a history of the Vietnam War.

In 1984, Colonel Ray was appointed the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Guard/Reserve) in Washington, D.C., which Pentagon appointment included responsibility for staffing and organizing a national management structure for exercising policy guidance and overall supervision of the 1,800,000 members of this nation's National Guard & Reserve Forces. In 1985, he received the National Eagle Award from the National Guard Association for exemplary public service while in the Pentagon.

In 1990, President Bush appointed Colonel Ray to the American Battle Monuments Commission, which is responsible for commemorating the services of American Armed Forces through the erection of memorials and maintaining cemeteries. In 1992, Colonel Ray was appointed by the President to the Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. Colonel Ray founded and served as the Chairman of the Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which privately raised more than one million dollars to build and dedicate a unique granite sundial as a Memorial to Vietnam service in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Today Colonel Ray writes and speaks on national security, foreign affairs and Constitutional issues such as the first principles of the U.S. military, illegal U.S. Participation in U.N. military operations, the true relationship between the separation of church and state, the Second Amendment, history of the Vietnam War and MIA / POWs, and a variety of defense and current policy subjects. He has appeared on a variety of national television news broadcasts: ABC World News Tonight, The Today Show, CNN News, Larry King Live, Crossfire and many national talk radio broadcasts including National Public Radio.

COLONEL RAY SPEAKS ABOUT THE INCREASINGLY OPEN ATTACK ON AMERICA'S FOUNDATIONS CALL TOLL FREE 1-800 837-0544 TO MAKE ARRANGEMENTS.

First Principles Press, P. O. Box 1136, Crestwood, Kentucky 40014, www.firstprinciplespress.org