FROM: Terry Lynch@aol.com; POB 241035; Montgomery, AL 36124-1035 
Phone: (334) 277-3582 voice/fax

DATE:  May 19, 1998 

TO:  Letter to the Editor      WORD COUNT: May be edited for space

REF:  Bill Of Rights Applies To The People! 

The chief threat to our freedom today is not the federal 
judiciary but moronic logic of the type spouted by Gov. Fob James 
and John Eidemoe with respect to the Bill of Rights not applying 
in Alabama.  One would think from Mr. Eidemoe's May 19th Opinion 
page article "Governor's Argument Rest On Solid Legal, Historical 
Ground," that we should throw the Bill of Rights out of the 
window and regress 222 years.  Then Fob and John could start a 
cotton plantation with slaves and fight another Civil War.

It is not, as Mr. Eidemoe's claims, the Advertiser's 
responsibility to publish Fob Jame's lengthy diatribe regarding 
the Bill of Rights and its non-application to the states. (That 
document is already posted at tax payer expense upon the internet 
by the Governor's Office at http://alaweb.asc.edu/govoff.html).  In fact government exist only because 
it serves the people.  Our Declaration of Independence makes that 
quite clear.  If despots and tyrants take freedom away from the 
people, then the people have the right to take up arms and throw 
the despots off the thrown, or in this case, out of office!

It amazes me that state officials and their lawyers alike, who 
argue for states rights always fail to read what the 10th 
Amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States 
are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people."

In the final analysis it is the people, not the states nor the 
federal government, who have the rights and freedoms not given to 
the representative governments they created. People, real, 
living, breathing, flesh and blood people are the ones who the 
Bill of Rights apply to.  Because people make up and form state 
and federal governments, the Bill of Rights was authored to 
guarantee the people would not have their basic, fundamental 
freedoms abridged by any form or level of government.

Given 222 years of American history, with our ancestors fighting 
and dying to secure our freedom, for any governor of a state to 
declare those freedoms so secured do not apply to the people but 
belong to state governments, is to place our nation in great 
peril!  It is akin to treason!

Indeed our founding fathers authored the Bill of Rights so that 
not any order of government created by church or state could 
abridge those rights.  That Fob James should seek to deny the 
Bill of Rights to the people of Alabama is reason enough to never 
elect him again for any public office, especially not governor of 
Alabama!  In fact, I'd go a step further and say Fob James has 
broken his oath of office to God and country and should be 
impeached!


Sincerely,
TerryLynch@aol.com
Montgomery