Hello Mr. Stein,

I recently saw you interviewed on CNN re pay raises to bring our military service members salary up to better standards than they currently endure. Bravo!

Please take the time to peruse the VERPA (Veterans Equal Rights Protection Advocacy) web site www.verpa.org to view the pro bono effort of an all volunteer group of military veterans and families of veterans who continue to suffer under the Feres Doctrine.

Our perpetual question at VERPA is how can our government remove the rights of service members under the First Amendment to The Constitution of The United States while requiring men and women to don their countries uniforms to go into battle to defend and protect the very same Constitution? VERPA has prepared a Bill to Abolish the Feres Doctrine to be presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee and case histories on abuses suffered as a result of Feres. Currently, the Senate Judiciary Committee is stonewalling this effort. Neither President Bush nor Senator Kerry have responded to appeals for intervention re Feres.

The Right to Seek Redress for Grievances has been refused to our veterans since 1950 when it was adopted by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. Current members of the Supreme Court have opined that Feres is "bad law" and Congress has the capability to abolish it.

Justice William Jackson temporarily stepped down from the Supreme Court to become the lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial at the end of WWII. Ironically, Justice Jackson, after seeing and witnessing the crimes against humanity of the Nazi Regime became the father of the Feres Doctrine.

Feres was killed in a barracks fire on a military installation in New Jersey in the late forties. His parents sued for negligence and lost because of the Feres Doctrine which states that veterans can not bring civil litigation against the government for ANY crime "incidental to service". We do not argue that wounds or death resulting from combat should be included in the right to seek redress.

That means murder, rape, assault, medical malpractice, medical experimentation, nuclear experimentation, negligence, false arrest, wrongful conviction, false imprisonment, perjury, secreting exculpatory evidence, bearing false witness, witness tampering, witness intimidation, libel and slander, violating attorney client relationship, treason and more go untried and unpunished.

The matters of Treachery and Treason lie in the National Security Council documents located in the Blog, below, which are in the Archives June and July 2003. Allied paperwork and links to them are also in the Blog URL, below.

A $1.3 Billion Civil Suit for Conspiracy To Obstruct Justice In A Capital Murder Case was dismissed with prejudice in the US District Court in Washington, D.C. in January, 2003, because of Feres.

With the reinstitution of the Draft looming in the not to distant future, Feres, if not abolished, will be in the front lines of information for perspective draftees who will have "informed consent/descent" on the perils of Feres prior to taking the oath of enlistment or commission.
The old saying of "You can't go to war without bullets" will be supplemented with "You can't go to war without trigger pullers". No one should be asked to give up the right to seek redress for grievances against the government that our founding fathers thought important enough to place in the First Amendment.

If I was involved with the NRA, I would be very nervous about the weakening of the First Amendment thinking that the Right to Bear Arms in the Second Amendment would be diluted next. Once Government starts chipping away at the Constitution it becomes a very slippery slope, indeed.

Your attention and recommendations in this matter are greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

John McCarthy
Chairman of The Board of VERPA
www.verpa.org
Blog: http://www.jenmartinez.com/vetsturn
3628 Colonial Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90066
310 397 1143

The effort by VERPA