For sixty-six years I have been a staunch republican, but over the last few years I have been astonished at how many office holders elected as republicans embraced a different philosophy. The ideal of less government, lower taxes and less regulation of our lives, appeared to fall by the wayside, when it seemed advantageous for a republican to sacrifice principles to stay in office. I did not come to this easily. It was the product of examining the votes of legislators in view of the enormous growth of the body of laws. The evidence is beyond dispute.

When I was born, four months before D-Day, Vermont Statutes were a single volume about three inches thick. That held steady until the early 1960’s when the laws began to mushroom, ending with our current “Vermont Statutes Annotated” occupying three of my bookshelves. By what constitutional provision do annotations (prior court decisions) attain the status of law? How in the world did it suddenly become necessary to have such a prodigious growth of law in less than fifty years? The answer is in many parts.

First of all, the supreme law of the land is the U. S. Constitution per Article VI, Clause 2. By extension, the supreme law of Vermont must be the Vermont Constitution, as far as it is in conformity with the supreme law of the land. Any statute, whether federal or state that is contrary to the constitutions is without authority, although that is not the same as unconstitutional because the power to make that declaration resides with the courts when the machinery of government works properly and an offended party brings suit. It is the constitutions that represent the standards by which I must examine the government and the elected people who comprise the operators of that government. Clearly, as evidenced by the enormous growth of government and Vermont laws, the two major parties have not been faithful to the constitutions because legislation bringing us to this bloated government could only happen with the agreement of the two.

Second, there has been a huge shift of authority away from a government of, for and by the people to a government of professional politicians, the lawyers union and bureaucrats. Elections have become nothing of substance and all about popularity and slick PR. Obviously, the ability of large parties makes possible slick PR with political science majors and advertising gurus conjuring 4-5 word catch phrases that get repeated endlessly. That is particularly destructive of good law and too often stands in direct contradiction to the constitutions. Most annoying is one third of our government is only open to the members of the lawyers union, also called the bar. Nothing in the constitution of the nation or the state authorizes this surrender of a critical part of the government to a new nobility, after the founders fought to get us free of the one in England. I care nothing about lawyers and their mainstream of legal thinking today, as the measure must and always be the constitution.

Third and finally, after many years of being in the chorus, I have finally recognized that the incessant bickering and finger pointing between the two major parties serves only one purpose. That purpose is to distract us from what they are doing. The media loves it because it gives them instant stories. We, the people, are poorly served as the distraction keeps us from observing the facts and it is the facts that are making a wreckage of our constitutional republic.

As a libertarian attorney general, I will work in a non-partisan way to restore the laws to what the people have always thought they were, so help me God.