The Art of Tetman Callis

“I have no fancies about equality on board ship. It is a thing out of the question, and certainly, in the present state of mankind, not to be desired. I never knew a sailor who found fault with the orders and ranks of the service; and if I expected to pass the rest of my […]

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“The captain was on deck nearly the whole night, and kept the cook in the galley, with a roaring fire, to make coffee for him, which he took every few hours, and once or twice gave a little to his officers; but not a drop of anything was there for the crew. The captain, who […]

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“Revolutions are matters of constant occurrence in California. They are got up by men who are at the foot of the ladder and in desperate circumstances, just as a new political party is started by such men in our own country. The only object, of course, is the loaves and fishes; and instead of caucusing, […]

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“Laws are the product of compromise, and no law pursues its purposes at all costs.” – Justice Neil Gorsuch, Luna Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools, et al. (No. 21-887, United States Supreme Court, March 21, 2023) (internal cites and quotes omitted)

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“Good afternoon folks. I am Grace Lynn. I am a hundred years young. I’m here to protest our school district’s book-banning policy. My husband Robert Nichol was killed in action in World War II, at a very young age, he was only 26, defending our democracy, Constitution, and freedoms. One of the freedoms that the […]

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“It’s a foundational requirement to train on civil unrest, civil disturbance, civil disobedience nationwide. We train for that in the National Guard.” – Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, “Interview of General William Walker, December 13, 2021”

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“A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest. How many times has history taught us this?” – Marilynne Robinson, “What Are We Doing Here?”

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“This Republic means something. It means something to me. I’ve buried a lot of soldiers, and my dad and mom fought in World War II, relatives that fought in a lot different wars. And this country means something, and Constitution means something. And it’s bigger than us, bigger than any one of us, and we’ve […]

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“It’s not the election that creates a democracy; it’s that peaceful transition of power.” – Lt. Gen. Walter A. Piatt, USA, November 3, 2021

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“From the earliest times when man chose to guide his relations with fellow men by allegiance to the rule of law rather than force, he has been faced with the problem how best to deal with the individual in society who through moral conviction concluded that a law with which he was confronted was unjust […]

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“We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot […]

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“An aspect of the deadlock in British and American politics today is the way in which the hinterland of the left’s assumptions remains determinatively Protestant. Indeed its subjectivism, emotionalism, restrictive puritanism, iconoclasm, and opposition to high culture owe more in the end to the Reformation than they do to the Enlightenment. These attitudes are all […]

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“Originalism is the only approach to text that is compatible with democracy. When government-adopted texts are given a new meaning, the law is changed; and changing written law, like adopting written law in the first place, is the function of the first two branches of government—elected legislators and (in the case of authorized prescriptions by […]

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“Every word employed in the constitution is to be expounded in its plain, obvious, and common sense, unless the context furnishes some ground to control, qualify, or enlarge it. Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of […]

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“The ordinary-meaning rule is the most fundamental semantic rule of interpretation. It governs constitutions, statutes, rules, and private instruments. Interpreters should not be required to divine arcane nuances or to discover hidden meanings.” – Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts

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“In the United States we have what is often called an adversarial system of justice. However, because it is adversarial—as distinct from inquisitorial—it is sometimes easy to forget that the purpose of the system is not to hold a contest for its own sake. The purpose of our system of justice is the orderly ascertainment […]

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“Congress may impose penalties in aid of the exercise of any of its enumerated powers. The power of taxation, granted to Congress by the Constitution, may be utilized as a sanction for the exercise of another power which is granted it.” – Associate Justice William O. Douglas, Sunshine Anthracite Coal Co. v. Adkins, 310 U.S. […]

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“The city holds all property which it owns as trustee for the public, although certain classes or kinds of property, such as the public streets, the public squares, the courthouse, and the jail cannot be taken on execution against it, for reasons which are plain to be seen. Such property is so necessary for the […]

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“At the very core of the Fourth Amendment stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion. A warrantless search is the quintessential intrusion and is presumptively unreasonable. The government can rebut that presumption by showing that the police, despite lacking a warrant, were […]

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“The aesthetic outlook is a moral outlook, one that stresses the values of openness, detachment, hedonism, curiosity, tolerance, the cultivation of the self, and the preservation of a private sphere—in short, the values of liberal individualism.” – Richard A. Posner, “Against Ethical Criticism”

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“A tax is not an assessment of benefits. It is a means of distributing the burden of the cost of government. The only benefit to which the taxpayer is constitutionally entitled is that derived from his enjoyment of the privileges of living in an organized society, established and safeguarded by the devotion of taxes to […]

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“Psychologists have attempted to understand how and why individuals and groups whousually act humanely can sometimes act otherwise in certain circumstances. A number ofpsychological concepts explain why abusive behavior occurs. These concepts include: Deindividuation. Deindividuation is a process whereby the anonymity, suggestibility, and contagion provided in a crowd allows individuals to participate in behavior marked […]

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“It is not the role of a federal court to provide comfort to litigants. Federal courts resolve concrete disputes between real adversaries.” – Judge Easterbrook, State Farm Life Ins. Co. v. Troy Jonas

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“Perhaps the most striking fact about the organized religious life of the colonials in the eighteenth century is the large number of people who were left out of it. Whether they had lost their faith before migrating or had been torn loose from church life in the business of moving, or whether they resented the […]

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“The ideal of the simple yeoman living close to nature, applying himself with loving care to the soil, and supplying virtually all his modest needs with his own labor and that of his family was an ideal first of the educated elite who read pastoral poetry and later of agrarian ideologues and politicians who wanted […]

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“The English colonies of the North American mainland, the rude provinces that would in time form the nucleus of the United States, were the elements of the first post-feudal nation, the first nation in the world to be formed and to grow from its earliest days under the influence of Protestantism, nationalism, and modern capitalist […]

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“Contrary to the State’s argument that it has discretion to charge whatever and whomever it desires, the separation of powers doctrine does not justify depriving a person of his or her constitutional rights.” – Judge J. Bustamante, State of New Mexico v. Mark Rendleman, et al.

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“WANTED POSTER – Jesse Woodson James: five feet eleven inches tall, brown hair, regulation killer-blue eyes. In photographs appears to be considering shooting the photographer. Does not test out well. Approaches casual strangers in an intimate way and interferes massively in their private lives. Is trapped in the dead hole and neither moves nor changes. […]

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“When you get elected President I think the first thing they do is take you in a room and say you know you’re not gonna do shit. Your hands are tied and Congress have the whole thing locked down and we all get screwed.” – Willie Nelson (interviewed by Martin Chilton in Telegraph Music, 2012)

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“Judges must keep in mind that poverty is not a crime; it is a condition, and every day presents a struggle for the poor to survive, to cope, to get by until tomorrow. When one is poor, drifting into petty crime can become an option, despite its undeniable risks.” – Justice Michael B. Hyman, The […]

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