The Magna Carta recently went on sale. It had belonged to Ross Perot, and he'd had it on loan to the US Archives. Now it is on sale. What a shame that the US doesn't own a copy.
Herald
Tribune Report
Thanks to the internet you can read it (with a dictionary) in translation from Latin and Middle English to English with middle English terms. You can read about it at several sites:
Avalon: http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0geu8ZU9PpGxBcAoV5XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTE5aHU2ZTNqBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNQRjb2xvA2FjMgR2dGlkA0RGUjVfMTEyBGwDV1Mx/SIG=12b9l8hp4/EXP=1190938068/**http%3a//www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/magframe.htm
and http://www.magnacartaplus.org/magnacarta/
And of course there is the Wiki entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
This document is linked to the Robin Hood legend through the agency of King John. The first reason is the "time." The Robin Hood story is often set during the period immediately before his reign. The second reason is that both stories have to do with the reality that "rights" require a constant struggle of people to work out their differences, adjudicate agreements, and spell out common rules.
The Magna Carta was granted for a number of reasons, but the principle one is that King John was the heir to an incredibly expensive and useless series of wars, and couldn't pay for them without the agreement of his "Magnates", and also of the Yoemen, Church Authorities, and other principal people of the country. What I like about he Magna Carta is that it was one of many "tipping points" and struggles that defined English common law and kept it from tipping completely over into tyranny. This struggle was a common one in European History. Indeed it is a common one in world history. Rarely do the common folks even get consulted in these struggles. In the dark and Middle ages, most of the rights struggles were between magnates and King as in the title of the Magna Carta. The common man only counts if he organizes and has a voice. Sometimes that organization is a positive thing. Sometimes it is more on the model of Robin Hood.
The Spanish Kings also faced Cities and Towns that demanded rights -- and for a Time England and Spain were not so different. England was blessed with relatively few external enemies. Spain was faced with conflict between religions, cultures and sovereignity. Eventually the Hapsburgs went the Chauvinist route and crushed opposition. Under the Motto "One Crown, One Religion, One people" they expelled first their Jews and then their remaining Moors, and launched wars to protect Catholicism first against Turkish invaders and later against Protestants. In the process they impoverished their nation to the point where one of their enemies became King an the Spanish Hapsburgs passed into history. It is the Bourbons who rule Spain to this day.
The English dynasty might have suffered a similar Fate. Charles the II lost his head, but the English could tolerate Kings even into modern times because of informal constitutions like the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta has lines demanding respect for Yoemen. I can imagine heirs of Robin Hood, bows in hand, standing side by side the Magnates facing King John. His memory might have lived on. Their demands were simpler than those of others. Of course nothing is forever, especially if the letter says forever, but I digress:
quotes:
General grant of rights:
"We have also granted to all freemen of our kingdom, for us and our heirs forever, all the underwritten liberties, to be had and held by them and their heirs, of us and our heirs forever."
Trial by Jury;
"No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."
When the "Minutemen" marched -- it wasn't as "Americans" but as colonists seeking their "rights as Englishmen" -- and those rights had to be fought over over a period of centuries by generation after generation of determined people -- often struggling against their own compatriots and the winds of war, fear, invasion, religious chauvinism, or simple greed and ambition. Our Founders broke with England when we realized, that like the Colonies and allies of Athens who rebelled from Athenian rule in the Peloponnese war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War)
any country can repress the rights of citizens of outside lands, even while decrying the slightest infringement on their own citizens rights.
Chris
Supposing there is a room of blind men -- ourselves -- and an elephant in that room. Now that room is the first chamber of the treasure tower, and the blind-men are unenlightened common mortals like ourselves. Now our first task is to undertand that room and the beast in it. At first we set about it haphazardly. Like fleas climbing a mountain we swarm the elephant claiming vast countries and describing them. Our sages describe parasols, pillars, snakes, volcanoes and vast caves. They fight over these descriptions. One group trying to conquer vast sheets of the elephants skin. They oppress one another and fight over whose description of the elephant is better. One group describes all the great beings who rule the elephant. Another group has a sage who maintains that the elephant is his own father and that he has the key to a universal vision of the elephant. All sages claim to see the elephant. But each describes a different thing. People are even more confused under the blind sages then they were before the sages claimed to have knowledge. They limit themselves to a single corner of the elephant. Their lack of knowledge becomes ignorance (ignore-ance).
But supposing we get the sages together in a council. How can they go about describing such an elephant?
The answer is that they would have to use science to measure and mark the borders sizes, boundaries of the known elephant. They would have to compare the visions to discover the common elements and which visions describe that science closest. Of course if after doing this they actually opened their eyes. They'd be surprised. Some would be surprised pleasantly. "Oh he's even more magnificent than I previously thought." Others would say "Oh he's nothing like I thought he was." Nobody would say "he's exactly what I expected" honestly.
Of course the elephant is the Multiverse, and the only reason we don't see it for what it really is is that it is far to vast to see clearly. One can see a galaxy from far off as a spiral of stars. But to really "see a galaxy" one would have to have the properties of timelessness and be able to see each star as well as the whole. We live in a galaxy. We dwell in orbit around a star. The true nature of all that is big, and we need to be content with all that bigness. Our role in the universe is the only thing that has apocalyptic properties; we each begin and end as individual beings. Yet what "we" are individually is vast too. To really know oneself blows away ego, or at least 'sees' it from a different angle. We are elephants who think we are fleas, fleas who think we are elephants. Fleas and elephants depending on perspective.
Chris
http://www.fraughtwithperil.com/blogs/holte/archives/001662.html
I'm talking about Robin Hood because I'm trying to connect what is going on right now to a story that illustrates the general point. Robin Hood wouldn't have a chance in our current society. He'd get Tazered and hauled off to jail the first time. The nearest thing we have to his "merry men" are the sad folks whose criminal records, drug use, medical or psycho-somatic problems have them living in the street. We won our freedoms, but freedoms are never permanent. Robin Hood includes a lesson that too.....
In one of my favorite versions, Robin Hood won his freedom, he became a free "yeoman" again and probably bought a farm somewhere and built a house. The story says that he still was in danger. According to the story he got sick, visited a doctor, the doctor was an old enemy, and opened his veins. Dying one of his old comrades found him nearly at his last breath. He shot an arrow to mark where he should be buried.
Freedom can be betrayed, but more often it is lost by inattention. Right now people are being locked up for opinions, being put on black lists for having the wrong name, protesting, exercising first amendment rights. Right now the Government is denying our first amendment rights, our fourth amendment rights, and is telling us to shut up about it. We are like Robin Hood, only we cut our own wrists. The King couldn't kill Robin Hood, but an old enemy pretending to be a friend could. He could protect his right to the commons against Kings and soldiers, but not against an enemy wielding a doctors knife wielded by a Prioress.
http://www.boldoutlaw.com/rhbal/bal120b.html
John became King of England. Repression shut down the "merry men" eventually. The forests of Nottingham are no more. The Sheriffs tazed a guy for exercising his first Amendment rights. A judge is being promoted to Attorney General for denying fourth amendment rights on the word of the Government (Jose Padilla). What is right can be defined as illegal. Justice is about what is right but it is not always about what is legal. Islamicists Terrorists will never defeat the United States -- only people like George W. Bush, Cheney and others who would destroy the constitution can do that.
Chris
http://www.fraughtwithperil.com/mt/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=1645&blog_id=15
The Robin Hood story is important to me because it's narrative encapsulates in an understandable way, a lot of issues important to myself -- and to other progressive thinkers in this "post modern" period.
The "hero" in the Robin Hood story is an outlaw. The question of why he is an outlaw dramatizes why societies need to embrace the principle of equality (as embodied in equal protection of the law and equal access to common goods). The context of the myth dramatizes why the issue of dividing the commons is both important -- and nuanced. And finally the story dramatizes how unjust systems generate outlaws. If the system itself wasn't oppressive "Robin Hood" could never become a hero. In my earlier post I introduced the subject. Here I'd like to explain how unjust societies, including our own, can and do create outlaws, and maybe some meditations on what to do about it.
Most of the versions of the myth of Robin Hood agree he became an outlaw because of unjust taxes and the Kings Prohibition on hunting deer. Some embellesh a bit, but the context is that the Nobles and Kings of England claimed exclusive rights over the forests of England. They literally owned every lock, stock and barrel of the country. The idea of sovereignity is inextricably tied to the idea of ownership. And Feudal Europe was a place where hierarchies of strong men -- barons and Kings -- owned most of the people who didn't live in "Free Cities" -- who were claimed by the king (or Emperor) who had set them free -- of the barons. The difference between a King and a baron was a matter of whether that baron was owned in turn by some other person. This feudal ownership was akin to slavery and was oppressive.
And the myth of Robin Hood arose, because the nobles and kings pushed the people of England to starvation. They forbade hunting in the forests, fishing in streams, drinking water from Noble property, or eating food belonging to the nobles. And as a result they criminalized people who otherwise might have obeyed the law and created outlaws like Robin Hood.
Robin Hood was popular not because he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, but because the rich were robbing from the poor and enlarging their domains at the expense of commoners, "yeomen," like himself. His resistance to the King was eventually successful. Not because he consciously resisted the King, but because his example inspired "Yeomen" throughout English History, to dare presume that they could be successful, resist oppression, and stand up for their "rights" as Englishmen even if they'd become branded as outlaws at some point. English and Scots eventually won the rights to fish in streams, cut peat for their fires, burn kindling in the winter, and other rights necessary to survival, from those barons who owned the forests, the farm-lands, the streams, the roads, and other common systems people needed to survive. These informal rights became embodied in "common law" and concepts like "common sense."
As such, real or myth, by inspiring common people with stories of a man who successfully resisted oppression, the Robin Hood myth lead to the revival of the principles of democracy and the birth of the United States. Common law was created by the struggle between ordinary "commoners" and the barons and kings of England. And only in England and later the US did commoners come out even remotely ahead prior to the French Revolution.
The Colonists were resisting the effort of bankers in alliance with the crown to impose monopolies on the colonies. When they did the Boston Tea Party they were as much inspired by Robin Hood's myth, and the traditions of English Common law, as by any Indian behavior. So we can thank Robin Hood for our democracy.
Chris
I found this gem that expresses the issues related to how to interpret the constitution intelligently given changing societies and understandings of basic principles such as liberty, justice, etceteras...
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/lochnerandconstitutionalhistoricism1
.pdf
This article describes and compares the decision of Lochner v. New
York and compares it to Plessy Versus Fergussen, and Brown Versus the
Board of Education which overturned Plessy.
(for a loud rendering of Louchner versus New York go here:
http://aalto.arch.ksu.edu/jwkplan/images/lochnerbullet.htm)
The article is long, but if you are interested.....
He notes that works are "canonical" (Brown versus Board of Education)
or "anti-canonical" (Plessy Versus Fergusen) according to changing
understanding of what the Constitution is about and then discusses
each of the views of the constitution that are cited to justify
changing from a clearly nasty decision like Plessy to Brown, or in the
case of Lochner versus new York. He then concludes:
"In posing these questions, I have employed a particular
constitutional theory of my own – constitutional historicism.
Constitutional historicism holds that the standards of good and bad
legal argument about the Constitution change over time in response to
changing social, political, and historical conditions. Not only does
doctrine itself change over time, but also the constitutional common
sense that allows well-socialized lawyers to recognize what is a
better and worse argument, what is a plausible interpretation of the
Constitution and what is "off-the-wall."
He is not talking about a "living constitution" in the sense that
others have described it, but in the sense that the understanding of
the constitution reflects the life and morals of the people of the
time -- and that embodies a shifting sense of what is "common sense"
and true about the world.
For example, referring to the other thread, William Jennings Bryan
opposed Darwinism on the grounds of it contradicting Christian
principles and his literalist understanding of Genesis -- not because
his egalitarian principles opposed social Darwinism. A person who
opposes Darwinism in our day and age might oppose it on the same
grounds -- but would also throw in arguments about the implications
and misuse of Darwinism to justify a dog-eat-dog society. While the
truths themselves don't change, the framework and understanding of
those issues does.
He goes on:
"Historicism does not deny the felt constraint of legal materials on
well-socialized lawyers and judges at a particular point in time.
Otherwise, the very distinction between the plausible and the
"off-the-wall" would make no sense. Instead, it argues that legal
materials and legal conventions, and particularly those that apply in
constitutional cases, offer sufficient flexibility to allow
constitutional argument to be a site for political and social
struggle. Through these struggles, the internal conventions of
constitutional argument and the constitutional common sense of a
particular historical period are reshaped."
The words of the constitution don't change unless amended. He then
goes on to examine whether Louchner versus New York was wrongly
decided by the standards of the time. He then demolishes the idea that
it necessarily follows from historicism that cases are always decided
rightly even by the standards of their own time. He states that while
the law (and the Constitution) provide restraints:
"My view, in contrast, is that culture enables and empowers
rationality and freedom as well as limiting and constraining them."
In other words, we are still responsible for our decisions not despite
of, but because they are conditioned by society and its norms. A
person who commits barbaric acts, acts that are barbaric even by the
standards of his own day, is a barbarian whether those standards
change or stay the same. All that changes is the level of awareness of
just how barbaric those acts are (or were).
On the other hand mores do change. The relationship of the State and
individuals to contracts has changed. At one time contracts were so
sacred that they were a regular source for tall tales about people
selling their souls to the devil. There was almost no such thing as an
"illegal contract." And indeed the core of the Louchner case depended
on the notion of the sacredness of contracts. Peckham spoke for the
majority:
"We think that there can be no fair doubt that the trade of a baker,
in and of itself is not an unhealthy axe to that degree which would
authorize the legislature to interfere with the right to labor, and
with the right of free contract on the part of the individual." ... It
might be safely affirmed that almost all occupations more or less
affect the health of the individual. There must be more than the fact
of the possible existence of some small amount of unhealthiness..."
The author continues:
"Peckham's majority opinion and Harlan's dissent shared many
assumptions about the police power and judicial review, although
Peckham was somewhat more of a libertarian."
And then he writes:
"The true outlier in Lochner v. New York is Justice Holmes, who does
not join Harlan's dissent. Holmes rejects the premises of limited
government and police power jurisprudence and offers what is
essentially a parliamentary model of democracy: the legislature can do
whatever it likes. Judged solely by the professional and doctrinal
assumptions of its time, Holmes' famous dissent is rather
unconventional, although, as Barry Friedman has recently pointed out,
it resonated quite well with the political views of many contemporary
Populist and Progressive thinkers."
He then compares Holmes and Thomas' "off the wall" comments:
"Put in today's terms, Holmes' dissent in Lochner is a bit like
Clarence Thomas' concurrence in United States v. Lopez in which Thomas
argued for a drastic reduction in the federal government's
constitutional powers to regulate interstate commerce; his arguments,
if accepted, would call into question the constitutionality of much of
the modern regulatory state. Thomas's extremely narrow view of federal
power, while lying outside the boundaries of conventional professional
assumptions, nevertheless has some resonance in conservative political
circles and in the larger political culture. Of course once a member
of the Supreme Court makes such an argument in the United States
Reports, it no longer seems as "off-the-wall" as it had before.
Legal culture has an important place for such "off-the-wall" arguments."
Then he says:
"They are a form of prophecy. They dare others to think differently
about settled questions in a constitutional regime. They try to
unsettle what seems fixed and certain. Even if today a particular
position seems extreme, the position asserts that it is the true
meaning of the Constitution that will come to be recognized in time.
"Off-the-wall" arguments cannot wholly be excluded from a legal culture."
At the same time, they represent views that reflect extremes in the
political culture that may be "upcoming" or may be simply extremes.
Holmes dissent might not be such a good idea after all in our own
context. Clarence Thomas' point may be an utter disaster if accepted.
As he says "What makes Justice Holmes' dissent in Lochner no longer
"off-the-wall," but rather an example of constitutional orthodoxy, is
not the quality of his argument at the time, but rather what happened
later on."
Holmes was making a prophesy of the state of things that folks like
Andy or Thomas currently decry. They represent antipodes of opinion.
He next says:
"If Harlan looks increasingly sensible today, that is because we have
lived through the Rights Revolution and the Second Reconstruction. We
understand that judges need ways of balancing competing interests and
protecting liberty from legislative overreaching."
We need balance in governance. We need linkage to principles. We need
principles to be linked to common sense and self interest be moderated
by principles. However, our concept of what those principles are
shifts with time. It's not the constitution that shifts. It is our own
relationship to it.
He concludes:
"For example, it is not difficult, I think, to conclude that Harlan's
approach in Lochner was available (after all, it commanded three
votes). If we want to say that it was also better, a more successful
legal performance, a more admirable product of the contested legal
culture of early twentieth century America, we must bring to bear our
present day judgments about what this admirableness consists in. There
is nothing wrong in that; if it is anachronistic, it is an anachronism
necessary to historical understanding. The fault is in assuming that
the best version of Lochner v. New York is the one that most closely
matches our own constitutional common sense. Put another way, the
mistake is in automatically assuming that Lochner was wrongly decided
because the right way to decide it was Holmes' way, which seems more
familiar to us in light of the New Deal."
Harlan's dissent seems somewhat more reasonable in our day:
"Speaking generally; the State in exercise of its powers, may not
unduly interfere with the right of the citizen to enter into contracts
that may be necessary and essential in the enjoyment of the inherent
rights belonging to everyone among which is the right to be free 'in
the enjoyment of all his faculties, to be free to use them in lawful
ways, to live and to work where he will, to earn his livelihood by any
lawful calling, to pursue any livelihood or vocation.'"
The web site author says:
"But, Harlan specifically notes that the right of contract itself is
subject to certain limitations which the state may lawfully impose in
the exercise of its police power. While this power is inherent in all
governments, it has doubtlessly been expanded in the past half century
owing to an enormous increase in population, urban living, and persons
employed in dangerous occupations. Having laid this foundation, Harlan
notes that if there is a dispute or doubt as to the validity of the
statutes [i.e. fair debatable] that doubt must be resolved in favor
the state and the statute's validity, and the c[our]ts must keep their
hands off, otherwise the Court places itself in the role of enacting
or disapproving legislation. Whether or not this New York law is wise
legislation is not the province of the court to inquire. Under our
system of government, the courts are not concerned with the wisdom or
policy [substantive due process] of legislation."
The State's regulation of bakery's wasn't "unconstitutional" simply
because it violated some sacred right of workers to work and of
bakers to make them work more than 60 hours a week. There had to be a
compelling violation of rights involved and not a mere policy dispute.
In our own time Harlan sounds more reasonable than either Peckham or
Holmes. Going by Holme's reasoning the State can do anything. Going by
Peckhams' reasoning the courts can intervene in policy matters such as
they did in Bush Versus Gore. Going (literally) by Holmes' reasoning
the State can arrest Doctors in California for prescribing medicine,
or declare people enemy combatants and lock them up without due
process. In either case the result is injustice and bad decisions.
The case was "wrong on the day it was decided" -- by our standards,
but not for the reasons that its opponents thought at the time; as the
author says:
"If Lochner was wrong the day it was decided, it will not be for any
of the reasons that we law professors continually offer for why it was
wrongly decided. It will not be because the Justices failed to
recognize the artificiality of common law baselines. It will not be
because the Justices failed to understand that the proper role of
courts was to police the democratic process. And it will not be
because the Justices did not realize that social and economic
legislation is to be upheld unless it is rationally related to some
set of facts that a rational legislature might have believed. Rather,
if Lochner was wrong the day it was decided, it will be because those
who lived in that time, enabled by the tools of understanding that
their legal culture offered them, could have done better for
themselves. Doing better would have shaped, however subtly, the legal
culture they lived in. That improvement, in turn, might have had
important ripple effects in the trajectory of the legal culture they
inhabited. Indeed, if they had done a better job, we might well not be
living in the legal culture we inhabit today."
I concur
Chris
Tom Ricks writes in his article "An Old School Senator Takes Petraeus to Task" about how he's going to miss Senator Warner. He then writes:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/iraq-debate/2007/09/an_old_school_senator_takes_p\
e.html
"Noting that Petraeus recently said in a letter to his troops that
political reconciliation hadn't worked out this summer in Iraq as he
had hoped, Warner asked, "on what facts did you predicate that hope
that you had?""
"Petraeus blamed his predecessors. As to why he stated it, Petraeus
explained, "'I needed to level with our troops.'"
-----------------------------------------
But he doesn't need to level with the American people -- because he's
under orders from the President to "stay the course."
Four long years after we entered Iraq with too few troops to stabilize
the country and do a proper hand off. Petraeus and McCain are finally
getting what they wanted -- enough troops to do at least part of their
original mission. They can't stop civil war with the military -- just
delay it and suppress it long enough for civilians to do so. Petreus
knows that without civilian reconciliation there can be no peace.
They know that the country will have to be, at the very least,
Federalized -- and at the worst partitioned -- or else the violence
will continue at least another 8 years with or without surges (and may
not end without a brutal Saddam type dictator once again in control). Yet when McCain asked Ambassador Crocker he said
"http://blog.washingtonpost.com/iraq-debate/2007/09/partition_not_viable_outcome.html "Partition, in my view, is not a viable outcome." This is depressing stuff. My only consolation is that when I re-read it I realized that McCain didn't say this. God I hope they elect a decent democrat, barring that I prefer McCain to most of the other idiotRepugs. But as Tom notes, if partition is not a viable option, and Centralized Democracy means civil war, what is???
But I guess what really frosts me is the willingness of the press and other otherwise intelligent people to go along with the Taz Cartoon style spinning and outright lying.... This stuff makes me sick, and every few months it gets more surreal....
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/iraq-debate/2007/09/warners_big_question.html
"Warner's Big Question"
"Sen. John Warner, in his courtly Virginian manner, cut to a key
question: "Are you able to say at this time, if we continue . . . that
that is making America safer?"
"Petraeus responded, in a low-key manner, "I believe that this is the
best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq.""
"Does that make America safer?" Warner persisted.
"Sir, I don't know actually," Petraeus said. He explained that he has
been thinking about the mission in Iraq. "I have not stepped back" to
look at the global picture.
And of course, the other question, is the military surge really working, is something that Petraeus seems under orders to parse. The Huffington post notes that our media seems ready to let them get away with it. As Ariana Huffington notes:
"Case in point: Sunday's AP story about how Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker wouldn't be meeting with "Mr. Bush or their immediate bosses" in order to protect the "independence and the integrity of their testimony." This is a claim that is beneath contempt. It is hard to fathom how a journalistic operation could write something so blatantly untrue when there have been numerous stories about how the Petraeus report has already been discussed and thoroughly vetted by the White House and how Ed Gillespie has set up a war room between the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House to coordinate the Petraeus PR campaign."
Meanwhile the administration, draws out the war to the benefit of a few contractors, and draws out the fear card linking 9/11 with Iraq, opposition to the war with treachery, and opposition to his idiot non-strategy to opposition to democracy.
He leaves Osama on a long leash in much the way that the President Papa Monzano not only kept Bokonin safe, but was secretly a believer in his religion.
Bush says he believes in God, we don't hear the word "Jesus" much from him. Could he be a Crypto Muslim? He certainly seems to be working for Bin Laden and the other Saudi's who engineered 9/11. I don't know who else he could be working for. In Argentina, it seems Carlos Menem was going that route. He was formally a Catholic, but he attended a mosque and during his Presidency Buenos Aires built a giant expensive one with money from the Saudis -- after the AMIA bombing. It's actually pretty pretty. Perhaps it is no coincidence that they had a 9/11 style event there when the Jewish Embassy and the AMIA were blown up during his administration. Who knows? Who could know? No, the Cats Cradle model is more appropriate. Secret religions, religious warfare, and fear of terrorists and revolutionaries always works to prop up dictators and demagogues.
(missing some information but close enough) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_Bombing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/denying-the-truth-petrae_b_63799.html
Further reading.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/iraq-debate/2007/09/warners_big_question.html
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/iraq-debate/2007/09/an_old_school_senator_takes_p\
e.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/10/AR2007091001303.\
html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/