Filed under: Grand Jury

The Beginning of a Grand Jury Investigation

It was my privilege to chair a Grand Jury for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa that investigated activities at Iowa State University and made several recommendations for changes in higher education.  This study of higher education is even more relevant now than when adopted December 23, 1968.  With the imposition of teacher unions and tenure laws, radicals in the soft sciences now dominate lower-level public education.

 

News reports had made it clear that drugs, immorality and disrespect for constitutional authority had become an ongoing part of the academic menu in our universities.  With about six months left in our term, I suggested to the county attorney, Charles Vanderbur, that the jury investigate what was going on at Iowa State University.  He said, "Dave, I'll do anything I can to help you."  He provided us with tape recordings of campus presentations by radicals.  After hearing the first tape, the jury members gave the go-ahead to undertake the investigation.  The jury's main concern was the education environment and its impact upon the behavioral patterns and decision-making ability of students.

 

My challenge as the foreman was to obtain unanimous agreement for significant recommendations from three Republican and three Democrat jurors.  Several legislative directives for changes in the administration of Iowa's colleges and universities followed the release of the study.

 

Because of tenured radicals embedded in the system, the impact of the Presentment faded within four or five years.  The Grand Jury report received nationwide media attention, and requests for copies of the Presentment came from government officials in Iowa, California and Washington, DC.

 

"As one of the tens of thousands who admire the action of your Grand Jury, I wish to commend  Foreman Norris and his jury for their courageous and true Americanism in focusing public attention on the perverted minority… who would destroy what we have… in America and deliver us unto our enemies" (E. Allen, Burlington, North Dakota, letter to the Nevada, Iowa Journal).

 

"OUT IN IOWA… The jury's report said 'there is a need for increased emphasis at all levels of education of the American ideal.  Our soldiers have been dying for this ideal.  Education as never before should clearly teach it.'  So say we" (from the Boston Record, printed in the Ames Daily Tribune).

 

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For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

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The Paper Trail of Our Constitution

By far the most consequential document for government throughout all history is the Declaration of Independence.  The hitherto inexperienced benefits that enabled America to become the greatest nation on earth rest entirely upon the justification for displacing the rule of man with rule by impartial, God-honoring law.  The Declaration provided the philosophical basis for prohibiting actions by government officials that would interfere with citizen sovereignty under God.  The people who vote in secret and choose like-minded representatives determine the consensus for government action.  Adherence to "self-evident" truths that men are "endowed by their Creator" with "certain unalienable Rights" unleashed citizen creativity and independence from tyranny and trickery of authoritarians in and out of government.

 

On July 8, 1776, the Declaration was read in public for the first time, outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, accompanied by the ringing of the Liberty Bell.  On August 2, 1776, the members of Congress signed the parchment copy.  It provides the logic and justification for the chain of authority described by Hamilton Albert Long as “man under God over government.”*  The Declaration and citizens' Bill of Rights, added later to the Constitution as the First Amendment, provides the fundamental God-honoring design for government, and the Constitution is the tool for implementing that design.

 

The purpose of government as a tool for, by, and of the people is spelled out in the preamble of the Constitution:  "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare [meaning common needs that do not conflict with the development of work ethic and personal self-reliance] and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

 

One historian points out that the preamble contains seven action words:  form, establish, insure, provide, promote, secure, and ordain.  The Constitution concludes:  "Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States present on the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven and of the independence [Declaration of Independence, founded upon the sovereignty of the benevolent God of creation and of the Bible] of the United States of America the twelfth [adopted twelve years earlier].  In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names."

 

Until amended by the people, written law holds firm.  It includes the right of trial by one's own peers and the citizen grand jury.  The divine (God-given) right authorizes the people to petition government officials and, if need be, lawfully punish or remove them from office.  The strict boundaries included "no taxation without representation."

 

From 1775 to 1783, the eight-year War for Independence from authoritarian rule was waged.  Its victory was a monumental achievement granted by the providence of God.  The signers of the Declaration of Independence had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.  Of the fifty-six signers, five were captured by the British as traitors and tortured; twelve had their homes ransacked and burned; two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; and another had two sons captured.  Nine of the fifty-six fought and died from wounds or hardships in the Revolutionary War.  In spite of the suffering, not one of the Founding Fathers ever reneged on his commitment to independence.**

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 *www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_history.html

**www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp

 

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For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

 

Restoring Education Central to American Greatness: Fifteen Principles That Liberated Mankind from the Politics of Tyranny By David A. Norris

“As one of the tens of thousands who admire the action of your Grand Jury, I wish to commend Foreman Norris and his jury for their courageous and true Americanism in focusing public attention on the perverted minority… who would destroy what we have… in America and deliver us unto our enemies.” (E. Allen, Burlington, North Dakota, letter to the Nevada Iowa Journal)

 

Ames, Iowa – (AP) – The Grand Jury wants “moral pollution’… “and defamation of our country ( in the Humanities curriculum) stopped.” (Denver Post)

 

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