Political Pistachio
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By Douglas V. Gibbs
If you watch the “man on the street” interviews circulating online, you might conclude that many Americans can’t name the three branches of government. Legislative. Executive. Judicial. It’s unfortunate when the average citizen doesn’t know this, but when an elected official doesn’t know it, the problem becomes far more serious.
These three branches exist at every level of government:
Federal Government
• Legislative: Congress (House and Senate)
• Executive: President, departments, and agencies (including the Department of Justice)
• Judicial: Federal court system
State Government
• Legislative: State legislature
• Executive: Governor, state agencies, attorney general
• Judicial: State courts
County Government
• Legislative: County governing body (Board of Supervisors, Commissioners, etc.)
• Executive: Sheriff and associated offices (Coroner, Auditor, Treasurer, Assessor, Clerk)
• Judicial: County courts
Municipal Government
• Legislative: City council
• Executive: Mayor, city manager, police chief
• Judicial: Municipal courts
The Legislative Branch creates, modifies and repeals law. The Executive Branch enforces it. The Judicial Branch applies it in the cases before it. This is middle‑school civics. Yet, many Americans can’t explain it, and, disturbingly, some officeholders can’t either.
Case in point: Mecklenburg County, North Carolina Sheriff Garry McFadden. During a legislative oversight hearing into the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian immigrant killed last summer on the L train, State Representative Allen Chesser asked McFadden a foundational question: “What branch of government do you operate under?”
McFadden’s answers were astonishing.
First: “Mecklenburg County.”
Asked again: “The Constitution of the United States.”
Pressed further, he repeated “Mecklenburg County.”
Chesser then asked if McFadden even knew how many branches of government exist. McFadden admitted he did not.
When Chesser finally laid out the three branches and asked which one a sheriff belongs to, McFadden said, “judicial.”
He was wrong. As Chesser explained, sheriffs are part of the executive branch, whose job is to execute/enforce the law.
Chesser asked the question for a reason: McFadden has repeatedly stated his opposition to cooperating with ICE. Chesser wanted to know how McFadden reconciled that stance with his executive‑branch duty to enforce the law.
ICE is an executive‑branch agency. It enforces federal immigration law under the President.
Sheriffs, as county executives, are expected to cooperate with lawful enforcement actions from other levels of government.
But McFadden has decided he will not.
If a sheriff can refuse to assist ICE because he disagrees with immigration law, what stops him from refusing to enforce any other law he dislikes? Should he ignore stop‑sign violations? Should he watch bank robbers flee because bank robbery is a federal crime?
A sheriff who does not understand his own constitutional role, and refuses to carry out the duties of that role, is unfit for the office he holds.
The murder of Iryna Zarutska was not an isolated tragedy. The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., had been arrested more than a dozen times and had repeatedly passed through the custody of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office and the North Carolina prison system. Legislators argue that McFadden’s soft‑on‑crime policies allowed Brown to remain free long enough to kill.
Compounding this, McFadden has refused to cooperate with ICE detainers, a direct violation of federal law. When a sheriff knowingly releases dangerous individuals who are subject to lawful federal detainment, he is not merely expressing an opinion; he is obstructing the enforcement of the law.
A law enforcement officer who intentionally allows a crime to occur, or continue, because he personally disagrees with the law can face serious civil and criminal consequences. Federal statutes such as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and 242 provide remedies and penalties for officials who deprive individuals of their rights under color of law.
When sheriffs refuse to assist ICE in apprehending criminal aliens, or when they stand by while protesters attack federal officers, they are enabling criminal activity through deliberate inaction.
The issue is no longer whether Sheriff McFadden understands his job. His testimony makes it clear he does not. The real question is whether an elected law enforcement officer who knowingly refuses to enforce the law should remain in office, or face consequences for the unlawful actions and inactions that have already cost innocent lives.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Opponents of the SAVE Act have settled on a new talking point: requiring proof of citizenship during voter registration will somehow “disenfranchise women,” particularly those who changed their names after marriage. According to this argument, women will be unable to obtain the documents necessary to prove they are citizens.
It is a remarkable claim, not because it is persuasive, but because of what it reveals. Once again, the progressive Democrats who insist they are defending people are actually talking down to them.
Most Americans, including married women, already navigate name changes with competence and regularity. They update their Social Security records, their driver’s licenses, their bank accounts, their insurance, their employment documents, and their tax filings. They manage passports, REAL IDs, and every other form of identification required in modern life. The idea that these same women are suddenly incapable of presenting documentation that reflects a legal name change is not a defense of women. It is an insult to them.
We saw this same rhetorical move during the debates over voter ID laws. Critics claimed that minority voters, particularly Black Americans, would be unable to obtain a basic photo ID. Yet, the overwhelming majority already had one. The argument wasn’t just wrong; it was patronizing. It assumed entire groups of people lacked the intelligence or ability to complete the same simple tasks everyone else completes daily.
Now the same logic is being recycled, only with a different target. This time, it’s married women who are supposedly incapable of managing their own paperwork.
The irony is that many of the very documents critics claim women “can’t get” are already in their wallets. REAL ID, which requires proof of identity, lawful status, and name changes, has been rolled out nationwide. Millions of women have already gone through the process of presenting their birth certificates, marriage certificates, or passports to obtain it.
If a woman can obtain a REAL ID, and millions have, she can certainly provide documentation for voter registration. The claim that she cannot is not a defense of voting rights. It is a political narrative built on the assumption that women are helpless.
The SAVE Act does not require anyone to show a birth certificate or passport at the polling booth. It deals exclusively with voter registration, the point at which citizenship must be verified. That is not controversial. It is common sense, and in line with international norms.
Most countries require proof of identity to vote, and America is unusual because our system relies on self-attestation of citizenship. 176 countries or jurisdictions require photo ID for voting – a nearly universal requirement. Countries that do not allow non-citizens to vote confirm citizenship through their registration systems with national population registries, enrollment to vote tied to citizenship records, national ID cards, or other ways to prove citizenship by the individual. While a few countries allow non-citizens to vote in certain local or regional elections, like New Zealand and Sweden, they require citizenship to vote in national elections. Canada and many European countries use voter registration cards, signature verification and National ID systems to implicitly verify citizenship because the underlying registry is already tied to citizenship status.
When it comes to requiring citizenship to vote in national elections, the United States is no exception. The only question is whether we enforce it.
The SAVE Act is designed to enforce it.
Democrats have finally realized they lost on the “Blacks can’t get ID” argument, so they have shifted to their largest voting-block: women. The argument that women will be disenfranchised is not about women at all. It is about avoiding the core issue: whether the federal government should ensure that only citizens are added to federal voter rolls.
Rather than address that question directly, critics of the SAVE Act have shifted their conversation to hypothetical hardships that do not reflect the lived reality of American women. They assume incompetence where competence is the norm. They assume helplessness where independence is the rule.
Women deserve better than to be considered helpless by a bunch of power-seeking politicians who are perched in high offices far from the public square.
American women are fully capable of managing their own legal documents. They run businesses, raise families, earn degrees, serve in the military, and navigate every bureaucratic system this country has created. To suggest they cannot handle a name change on a citizenship document is not advocacy. It is condescension.
The SAVE Act does not disenfranchise women. It does not burden them. It does not treat them as anything less than the capable citizens they are.
The only people treating women as incapable are the critics who claim to be defending them.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
| As we march toward the Declaration of Independence, today we discuss influences on the Founding Fathers. What historical events and who were the people who shaped their understanding of what America should become? |
| Tuesday Online Constitution Class |
  3:30 PM Pacific Online Constitution Class |
| Online Mr. Constitution Class www.mr-constitution.com America’s Historical Foundation: The Founders used history to shape America’s future. We must ask: What was the culture of the Founding Fathers? How influential were things or people like the Bible, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Saxons? Untold History Channel – (locate the shows labeled “Learn the Constitution”): https://rumble.com/c/UntoldHistoryChannel |
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Contrary to the fashionable claim that the Constitution is somehow outdated, irrelevant, or too “rigid” for modern society, the truth is precisely the opposite. The Constitution remains the most successful framework for limited government in human history. It is a brilliant structure designed not to restrain the people, but to restrain the government. It encourages liberty, secures free‑market prosperity, and stands as a bulwark against the very tyranny that always waits at the edges of human ambition.
Those who dismiss the Constitution as antiquated reveal not a flaw in the document, but a flaw in their understanding of human nature. The Founding Fathers knew something timeless: power always seeks to centralize and accumulate, and without imposed boundaries upon it, it devours. The Constitution is the cage that keeps the roaring lion under control and prevents it from wandering into our lives.
It is true that over time we have lost many of the structural protections the Framers put in place. The slow drift toward pure democracy, a system the Founders openly warned against, has eroded the careful balance of our republic.
• The 17th Amendment severed the States’ direct voice in the U.S. Senate.
• The 16th Amendment handed the federal government a direct pipeline into the people’s wallets, bypassing the States entirely.
• The ongoing push to tinker with or abolish the Electoral College seeks to erase the federal nature of our Union and replace it with a national plebiscite dominated by a handful of population centers.
These changes have weakened the original architecture, no question. But even with these flaws, the Constitution remains the longest‑standing, most stable, and most liberty‑producing governing document ever written. No other nation has enjoyed such continuity, lifting more people out of poverty than any other civilization, providing more opportunity for success throughout history, and serving as a the most durable framework for self‑government in history.
The endurance of the Constitution is not an accident. It is the product of design.
James Madison in Federalist Paper #45 explained the proper division of power with elegant clarity: the federal government is responsible for external matters and issues affecting the Union as a whole, while the States handle the internal concerns of their communities. Keeping the federal government out of the states regarding state issues was the point – while empowering the federal government to handle the issues that are needed to be handled by a central system like foreign affairs, communication between he states through systems like the Postal Service, mediating disputes that cross state lines, securing the border and ensuring foreign actors who are dangerous to our communities are apprehended and deported, and waging war whenever it is absolutely necessary. This was the operating system researched, debated and created for the purpose of establishing a republic that serves its citizens, maintains liberty, and can defend itself against ideologies that seek to destroy it.
The distribution of power is a simple recipe. Local government for local issues. State government for state issues. Federal government for national issues that preserve, protect, and promote the Union.
This layered structure was designed not only to be efficient, but also protective. It keeps power close to the people who must live under it. It prevents distant officials from micromanaging the daily lives of citizens they will never meet. It ensures that the federal government remains a servant, not a master. But, the lion in the cage can be unleashed on America’s enemies, whoever and wherever they may be.
The American system was built on the radical idea that individuals are not subjects of the state. We are free to pursue our own lives, our own callings, and our own dreams. The government, according to the Bill of Rights, shall make no laws interfering with our pursuit of happiness through our Natural Rights. Government was not intended to be there to grant us permission, but to get out of our way because our God-given rights pre‑exist government.
The Constitution does not create liberty.
It recognizes liberty.
It secures liberty.
And it limits the government that would otherwise swallow liberty whole.
This is why America became the most prosperous country in history: Free individuals, operating in free markets, under a government intentionally shackled by constitutional boundaries. That is the formula, and it has worked beautifully. It still works. And every attempt to establish systems unlike it anywhere in the world, based on collectivist schemes, has failed wherever it has been tried.
The Constitution endures because truth and liberty based on a godly foundation endures.
The Constitution remains relevant because human nature has not changed. Ambition still seeks power. Bureaucracy still expands. Politicians still promise the world with other people’s money. And every generation still produces those who believe liberty is too unpredictable, too unruly, or too dangerous. No matter the generation, there is always those who believe that centralized authority can manage society better than free individuals can.
The Founders understood this temptation. They had seen it in kings, parliaments, and empires. They knew it would reappear in new forms, wearing new slogans, wrapped in new moral language. That is why they built a system that does not rely on the virtue of leaders, but on the limitation of leaders and the power of the rule of law – The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
The Constitution is not a relic; it is a restraint upon government based upon godly virtue.
The real question is not whether the Constitution is outdated, but whether we capable of defending its timeless principles. When critics say the Constitution is irrelevant, what they really mean is that they find its limits inconvenient. They want government to do things the Constitution does not authorize. They want power without boundaries, authority without accountability, and outcomes without the consent of the governed.
But the Constitution does not bend to the fashions of the moment. It was written to outlast them.
The question is not whether the Constitution still works.
The question is whether we still have the discipline to work within it.
Benjamin Franklin famously responded to Elizabeth Powel when she asked about the system created by the Constitution in 1787, “a republic, if you can keep it.” Keeping it requires more than nostalgia. It requires understanding the structure, respecting the limits, and recognizing that liberty is not the natural state of government. Throughout history tyranny and oligarchies have dominated the landscape. Liberty is the exception. Liberty is difficult to achieve, and it is difficult to maintain. Tyranny is the default setting of human power. The Constitution was created to be the firewall.
Even with the damage done by the 16th and 17th Amendments, even with the erosion of federalism, even with the constant pressure to nationalize every issue and centralize every decision, the framework still stands. It still secures our rights. It still works when we allow it to, defend it, and do what we can to operate within the system it created.
The path forward is not reinvention. It is restoration. America does not need a new system. It needs a renewed commitment to the one that already works.
• Restore federalism.
• Reassert the sovereignty of the States regarding state issues.
• Re‑embrace the Electoral College as the safeguard of a federal republic and a protection against the excesses of democracy.
• Limit the federal government to its enumerated powers.
• Return local issues to local hands.
• Trust free people to build free lives.
This is not radical. It is the original design.
The Constitution remains to this day the greatest political achievement in human history. No other country has enjoyed such stability, such prosperity, or such enduring liberty. No other governing document has lasted as long or produced as much opportunity. The Constitution is not merely relevant, it is indispensable.
It is the reason America became a beacon of hope.
It is the reason tyranny has been held at bay.
It is the reason free markets flourished.
It is the reason individual liberty became the American birthright.
And it is the reason we must defend it now.
Because if the Constitution ever truly becomes “irrelevant,” it will not be because it failed us.
It will be because we failed it.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Recently, FBI agents seized election documents from an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia. Back in 2020, the Trump campaign questioned election procedures, absentee-ballot verification, recount processes, and certification. His civil lawsuits challenging these issues were all either dismissed or dropped.
In 2023, a racketeering indictment was filed against Trump, alleging that Trump and others attempted to unlawfully overturn Georgia’s 2020 results.
The U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump has now sought access to ballot materials as part of federal investigations, revealing that Georgia’s 2020 ballots remain the subject of ongoing legal scrutiny.
When questioned about it, Trump replied, “We have it all.” That was his way of reminding us that he believes the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. He said during an NBC News interview that we will “find out the true winner of Georgia.”
If foreign interference is discovered, the whole thing may pull into the investigation Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, as well.
After the FBI executed the search warrant seizing Fulton County ballots and election records tied to the 2020 election, Fulton County sued the Trump administration for repossession of the files taken. If there was no cheating, what are they worried about?
One wonders if Georgia is only the beginning when it comes to a mass investigation into the 2020 election.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary