Speaker Burns Stands Down, Sort of, But His Acts Live On, Must Resign or be Removed

Last Wednes­day evening, I received a call from an indi­vid­ual whose pur­pose it was to make sure I had heard the day’s news that State Sen­a­tor Colton Moore had been threat­ened with arrest by Speak­er of the Geor­gia House, John Burns. As he expressed it, Burns’ threat would mate­ri­al­ize should the Sen­a­tor from the 53rd attempt to attend Gov­er­nor Kemp’s State of the State Address to be held the next morn­ing in House cham­bers. All of that was news to me and extreme­ly hard to imag­ine being true.

So, I thanked my friend and set out to under­stand what was going on, engag­ing sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als I expect­ed could ver­i­fy the facts first hand. It did not take long to cer­ti­fy the infor­ma­tion I had received, as ridicu­lous as it sound­ed, was indeed true.

The next morn­ing I released my Sub­stack enti­tled, Speak­er Burns Must Stand Down-The Repub­lic is at Stake. I wrote that sub­ti­tle because under Arti­cle IV, Sec­tion 4 of the US Con­sti­tu­tion, of which the State of Geor­gia is a sig­na­to­ry, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, and the State of Geor­gia, is oblig­ed to oper­ate under a repub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment. That means that each Amer­i­can, includ­ing each Geor­gian, must be rep­re­sent­ed in every lev­el of gov­ern­ment by indi­vid­u­als of their local choos­ing. That tenet must remain true, at all times, and dur­ing all leg­isla­tive activ­i­ties, or, as I indi­cat­ed Thurs­day, the repub­lic is lost.

Last Thurs­day morn­ing, pri­or to Gov­er­nor Kemp’s speech, the Amer­i­can Repub­lic was indeed lost. I say that because, when any one Amer­i­can, much less 270,000 Amer­i­cans, is denied rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the gov­ern­ment, the repub­lic is no longer func­tion­ing. Oper­at­ing under the Speaker’s stand­ing order, the House door­man, and an assailant in a blue suit, not only phys­i­cal­ly denied Sen­a­tor Moore access to the joint ses­sion, but as videos from sev­er­al angles indi­cate, cer­tain­ly in my opin­ion, Sen­a­tor Moore was assault­ed, even thrown to the floor, as he attempt­ed to ful­fill an oblig­a­tion to his 270,000 con­stituents to attend the governor’s speech. Any­one watch­ing those record­ed events should notice, Sen­a­tor Moore kept his arms to his side at all times. The sen­a­tor from north­west Geor­gia ver­bal­ized his right to gain entrance be hon­ored, while attempt­ing to bend him­self around his adver­saries, but nev­er through those who pur­pose­ly denied him his right of entrance, the sen­a­tor obvi­ous­ly remain­ing care­ful not to use phys­i­cal force him­self to resist against any forces he might be sub­ject­ed to. That is impor­tant because, under Geor­gia House Rules any grounds for the Speak­er to remove Sen­a­tor Moore, or any­one else from the House cham­ber or its gen­er­al area, rest upon that indi­vid­ual first caus­ing a dis­tur­bance or dis­play­ing dis­or­der­ly con­duct. For a full review of the facts and cir­cum­stances I describe, when you are done read­ing please refer to the fol­low­ing linked video.

Any indi­vid­ual in Sen­a­tor Moore’s cir­cum­stances there­fore should be care­ful that his or her actions not sug­gest aggres­sion. Obvi­ous­ly, under no cir­cum­stance might the sim­ple act of walk­ing where one is enti­tled to walk be regard­ed as aggres­sion. The aggres­sors were those act­ing to phys­i­cal­ly deny the senator’s right­ful access to the morning’s pro­ceed­ings. Any dis­tur­bance in the House cham­ber door area there­fore can­not be placed at the senator’s feet. Sen­a­tor Moore had a right, not only under the law, but also under House Rules, to take part in the joint ses­sion that morn­ing.

As you see below, accord­ing to those House Rules, the pow­er of the Speak­er to remove any­one from the area in ques­tion is pred­i­cat­ed upon that indi­vid­ual dis­play­ing dis­or­der­ly con­duct result­ing in a dis­tur­bance.

The actions of those restrict­ing Sen­a­tor Moore’s move­ments toward the House cham­ber door­way Thurs­day morn­ing, as report­ed, were not as a result of any dis­tur­bance caused by the sen­a­tor, but instead were pred­i­cat­ed on a stand­ing order issued pub­licly by Speak­er Burns last year that one Geor­gia Sen­a­tor, Colton Moore of the 53rd Dis­trict, not be allowed into the cham­ber. In the fol­low­ing video, you will hear Speak­er Burns issue that stand­ing order:

Had Burns, or any­one involved in Thurs­day morning’s events sim­ply read the rules gov­ern­ing the Speaker’s pow­ers, they would have known that the House Speak­er has no author­i­ty to issue a stand­ing order to restrict any elect­ed sen­a­tor, includ­ing Sen­a­tor Moore, from access­ing the cham­ber floor. They fur­ther­more would have known that any such stand­ing order could only have been issued AGAINST House rules, not­ing Rule 7 below, bestow­ing to any and all mem­bers or offi­cers of the Sen­ate a stand­ing right of access to the House floor, dur­ing or 30 min­utes pri­or to the House con­ven­ing.

And in fact, a stand­ing order to restrict access to the floor of the House afford­ed all Geor­gia sen­a­tors, would be no less AGAINST House rules than should that stand­ing order be issued against the Gov­er­nor of Geor­gia him­self. The rule guar­an­tee­ing Geor­gia Sen­a­tors blan­ket access onto the House floor is actu­al­ly men­tioned BEFORE the men­tion of that same access afford­ed the Gov­er­nor.

If not prop­er­ly cor­rect­ed, a prece­dent has now been set. Thus, for exam­ple, in the future should a par­tic­u­lar par­ty in pow­er in the House decide to restrict access to the House cham­ber by, say, an oppos­ing party’s sen­a­tors, or even a gov­er­nor, per­haps due to a dis­agree­ment of per­son­al opin­ion, by the prece­dent Speak­er Burns has now set, and which has not been cor­rect­ed, that would be just fine.

Giv­en that any House rules osten­si­bly invoked to restrict Sen­a­tor Moore’s access to the House cham­ber do not exist, there would be no author­i­ty for those who act­ed to restrict Sen­a­tor Moore’s move­ments, and sub­se­quent­ly arrest and take him to jail, to do so. That being the case, the senator’s Thurs­day morn­ing arrest could eas­i­ly be con­strued an unlaw­ful, false arrest, no crime or mis­de­meanor hav­ing been com­mit­ted by the sen­a­tor. It also appears that any­one who took part in an act inter­pret­ed to be a false arrest of the sen­a­tor may find them­selves in jeop­ardy of the same mis­de­meanor charged against Sen­a­tor Moore, and per­haps oth­er laws and civ­il penal­ties gov­ern­ing false arrest as well. We should all under­stand the risks Speak­er Burns placed upon indi­vid­u­als obey­ing his com­mand out­side the door to the House cham­ber. Vio­lent acts occurred because of the Speaker’s unlaw­ful and unruly order to the House door­keep­er. In issu­ing that stand­ing order, as he did last year, Speak­er Burns wrong­ly endan­gered the lives and well-being of all either tak­ing part, or being vic­tim­ized in the ensu­ing mele, and per­haps any­one in the gen­er­al area. Speak­er Burns went rogue issu­ing that order. Geor­gia can­not tol­er­ate that kind of activ­i­ty from its Speak­er.

Regard­less of any of the fore­go­ing, the next day, Fri­day of last week, Speak­er Burns did stand down, well sort of, while obvi­ous­ly attempt­ing to save face, the Speak­er issu­ing a non­sen­si­cal nar­ra­tive report­ed as the fol­low­ing by US News and World Report:

So, let’s ana­lyze the pas­sages I high­light­ed for you, and the absur­di­ties Speak­er Burns appar­ent­ly would like you to believe as he attempts to sal­vage his posi­tion as Speak­er, his rep­u­ta­tion and defend his actions. First of all, US News report­ed what you already know, that last year Speak­er Burns “banned” Sen­a­tor Moore from the House cham­ber. At least he appar­ent­ly thinks he did. You have seen the video. In doing so, Burns invoked no law, no rule of the House, elicit­ed no motion from the floor and took no vote. Thus, every­thing we are talk­ing about is on Speak­er Burns. What US News failed to report is that in issu­ing his order, the Speak­er USED AUTHORITY HE DOES NOT POSSESS FROM RULES THAT DO NOT EXIST. As I just showed you, House Rules actu­al­ly PREVENT Speak­er Burns from doing what he act­ed to do in the above video.

Sec­ond­ly, although he lift­ed his so-called ban last Fri­day, in doing so Burns did not admit fault for break­ing House Rules by issu­ing a stand­ing order ban­ning a state sen­a­tor from the House cham­ber. But if the Speaker’s ban of Sen­a­tor Moore were jus­ti­fied on Thurs­day, that ban would still be jus­ti­fied Fri­day, today and ever­more, would it not? Of course it would.

So, how did Speak­er Burns get around hav­ing to admit wrong-doing when he lift­ed his ban of Sen­a­tor Moore? Believe it or not, Speak­er Burns stepped cau­tious­ly around his cul­pa­bil­i­ty by seem­ing­ly bring­ing late Speak­er Ral­ston back to life. Instead of admit­ting his own wrong-doing in all of this, apol­o­giz­ing as he should and jus­ti­fi­ably revers­ing course, Speak­er Burns deferred to what he alleged to be the wish­es of deceased Speak­er Ral­ston, some­how made known to Burns by Ral­ston after his death. Although the late Speak­er Ralston’s wish­es, appar­ent­ly issued posthu­mous­ly, allowed for hin­der­ing the legislature’s work last Thurs­day morn­ing, sud­den­ly Burns dis­cerned from the late Speaker’s spir­it that it was time to in essence, “call off the dogs” on Fri­day.

And, now, accord­ing to Speak­er Burns, the Ral­ston fam­i­ly has expressed to him their “desire for the cham­ber to resume busi­ness as nor­mal- with all mem­bers of the Gen­er­al Assem­bly present for any future joint ses­sions.” So, appar­ent­ly it is the late Speaker’s fam­i­ly mem­bers who have assumed the role of decid­ing how this shit show final­ly plays out, not the Speak­er, who con­tin­ues to present him­self as right­eous in all he has done, how­ev­er sav­ing face as an indi­vid­ual who has gra­cious­ly and mag­nan­i­mous­ly acqui­esced to the wish­es of the late Speaker’s ghost and remain­ing earth­bound fam­i­ly.

The absur­di­ty of Speak­er Burns’ cal­cu­lat­ed nar­ra­tive, as quot­ed from US News, designed to present his per­son­al right­eous­ness while allow­ing him to end a ver­i­ta­ble shit show of his own mak­ing, insults human intel­li­gence. Obvi­ous­ly, in life Speak­er Burns was Speak­er Ralston’s friend. That is fine, we all need friends. How­ev­er, as a result of that friend­ship, Speak­er Burns man­u­fac­tured cer­tain author­i­ty where there was none, to ban Sen­a­tor Moore, who last year spoke neg­a­tive­ly of his friend, from enter­ing the House cham­ber. This is what politi­cians do to gain and main­tain polit­i­cal pow­er. They make up their own vaunt­ed per­sonas, make up nar­ra­tives to show you what great peo­ple they are, screw up roy­al­ly because that is who they real­ly are, get found out because it is inevitable, and make up more nar­ra­tives to explain how their screw up wasn’t their fault. And as usu­al, this entire escapade is the fault of the politi­cian, Speak­er Burns, who tried to cov­er it all up.

The Danger of Politicians Acting Upon Their Own Personal Opinions

Note that every­thing I describe above is about cer­tain per­son­al opin­ions held among elect­ed politi­cians. Speak­er Burns has one opin­ion of the late Speak­er Ral­ston. There are many who share that opin­ion, but few who would have done what the Speak­er did in light of that opin­ion. Sen­a­tor Moore has a dif­fer­ent opin­ion of the late Speak­er in con­trast with the Speaker’s, and voiced his opin­ion when few agree­ing with that opin­ion might have voiced it, believ­ing doing so to be bad tim­ing, and not nec­es­sary at best. So, both of these politi­cians are guilty of oper­at­ing in the extreme. One, how­ev­er, mere­ly expressed his opin­ion, while the oth­er act­ed on his opin­ion to hurt the oth­er. In so doing, Burns placed those doing his bid­ding, as well as Sen­a­tor Moore, at great phys­i­cal risk.

The oth­er night I wrote to some friends of mine that, of course, giv­en no per­ma­nent harm came to any­one, I was glad, in a way, that every­thing I describe above occurred. In my own way, I was sum­mon­ing the thoughts of Thomas Paine, who wrote the fol­low­ing:

It is impor­tant under­stand a term Paine used above. To our found­ing fathers, the terms ‘tyran­ny’ or per­haps ‘despo­tism’ had a spe­cif­ic def­i­n­i­tion. Accord­ing to the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, tyran­ny, or despo­tism, is the un-author­i­ta­tive use of the pow­er of gov­ern­ment. Any­time the gov­ern­ment, or a mem­ber of the gov­ern­ment, uses pow­ers he or she does not right­ly pos­sess, the result is what our founders called, “tyran­ny.’ Because Speak­er Burns had no author­i­ty to issue the order he did, and cer­tain­ly because the order he issued went against the author­i­ty he actu­al­ly does pos­sess, our founders would say his order against Sen­a­tor Moore was a clas­sic act of tyran­ny.

Now, I wrote that note to my friends because it is only by liv­ing through a cri­sis of sorts, as which occurred last Thurs­day morn­ing and since, when the souls of men are tried, that any of us learn who we real­ly are. Whichev­er side we choose when the chips are down, that is who we are. Until the chips are down, how­ev­er, we might pro­claim we would do cer­tain things giv­en cer­tain cir­cum­stances, but, frankly, we nev­er real­ly know, and nei­ther does any­one else. None of us tru­ly know who we are, and how we would react, until a cri­sis with mean­ing­ful down­side is upon us.

And now we know exact­ly who Speak­er Burns and his sup­port­ing cast of asso­ciates are. Find­ing that out is the val­ue of the cri­sis that played out on Thurs­day and ever since. And what we have found out is that Speak­er Burns does not have the hon­esty and integri­ty to obey his own House rules, to the extent that he ordered what could only become an inevitable phys­i­cal attack designed to harm an elect­ed offi­cial with whom he mere­ly main­tains a per­son­al dis­agree­ment. Speak­er Burns must there­fore resign. He has lost the respect of the cit­i­zen­ry. If he fails to step down, he must be removed. I chal­lenge all mem­bers of the Geor­gia House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to exam­ine their posi­tions intro­spec­tive­ly, and hon­est­ly, to deter­mine the side on which they come down on that ques­tion, real­iz­ing that whichev­er side they choose defines who they real­ly are.

History Repeats

As all this was devel­op­ing, a friend remind­ed me of cer­tain events I remem­bered from child­hood, when the Geor­gia House, led by its Speak­er at the time, act­ed sim­i­lar­ly against an indi­vid­ual who expressed an opin­ion they mere­ly did not agree with. The year was 1966, when the Geor­gia House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, led by its Speak­er, denied new­ly-elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive Julian Bond access to his right­ful seat in the very same House cham­ber we are talk­ing about today. You see, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bond had voiced an unpop­u­lar opin­ion, at least for the times, express­ing oppo­si­tion to the war in Viet­nam. And like the posi­tion Sen­a­tor Colton Moore has tak­en today, Bond refused to dis­so­ci­ate him­self from his stat­ed opin­ions in exchange to receive access to his law­ful place in the House cham­ber.

Per­haps you see just how dan­ger­ous it can be to a repub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment for politi­cians in pow­er­ful posi­tions to abuse that pow­er, becom­ing tyrants, by enforc­ing their opin­ions on those under them. Dur­ing that dark episode of Geor­gia his­to­ry, when Julian Bond was denied his right­ful seat in the Geor­gia House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, sim­i­lar to last Thurs­day, the repub­lic was lost. For the next two years, Julian Bond’s House dis­trict lacked true rep­re­sen­ta­tion in state gov­ern­ment. Even­tu­al­ly, the US Supreme Court had to resolve the mat­ter, and did so in Bond’s favor.

The case before the Supreme Court was one known as Bond v. Floyd. The “Floyd” Julian Bond sued was James “Slop­py” Floyd, the Speak­er of the Geor­gia House at the time. It was “Slop­py” Floyd who voiced his opin­ion, stand­ing at the same ros­trum as Speak­er Burns, who with the agree­ment and applause of 184 against 14 col­leagues in the House, sim­i­lar as you wit­nessed in the video above, vot­ed to deny Julian Bond his right­ful seat among them. Last year, dur­ing Sen­a­tor Moore’s few min­utes at the well of the Sen­ate, he offered his opin­ion oppos­ing the late Speak­er Ral­ston, whom he regard­ed as cor­rupt, being “per­pet­u­al­ly memo­ri­al­ized” by a joint res­o­lu­tion under con­sid­er­a­tion by the Geor­gia Sen­ate. The next time you vis­it the area of the Geor­gia Capi­tol, I want you to stand at the cor­ner of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Dri­ve and Capitol/Piedmont Avenue, and place your back toward the Capi­tol. I want you to then look diag­o­nal­ly across the inter­sec­tion. There, iron­i­cal­ly, you will see the James “Slop­py” Floyd Twin State Office Build­ings, the name of the late Speak­er respon­si­ble for destroy­ing the Amer­i­can repub­lic for two years “per­pet­u­al­ly memo­ri­al­ized” by the Geor­gia leg­is­la­ture in the state gov­ern­ment dis­trict of down­town Atlanta.

Per­haps, if you think about it long enough, and seri­ous­ly enough, you might begin to under­stand why a Sen­a­tor Colton Moore, or some­one like him, may have advised the Geor­gia Sen­ate, in his own way, to use restraint when lion­iz­ing politi­cians, espe­cial­ly those who only recent­ly com­plet­ed their pub­lic ser­vice, the effects of their works in office not yet ful­ly under­stood. And per­haps, at least I hope, some­day down the road, future leg­is­la­tures might look back on these times, and those elaps­ing before, and using cer­tain per­spec­tive and judg­ment only time can unlock, recon­sid­er the name “per­pet­u­al­ly memo­ri­al­ized,” on those build­ings, and appro­pri­ate­ly rename those tow­ers the “Julian Bond State Office Build­ings.” If that were to occur, I would try my best to obtain a front row seat at the ded­i­ca­tion.

Epilogue

Many of you may not know the sto­ry behind the remarks of Sen­a­tor Colton Moore last year, out of which these events deeply stirred cer­tain souls. Below, with his per­mis­sion, I post a high­light of facts, as writ­ten by my good friend, Derek Somerville, BTW a for­mer FBI agent, who pro­vid­ed months of intense, self-fund­ed research, unearthing the facts from which Sen­a­tor Moore spoke dur­ing his few min­utes in the well of the Sen­ate last year.