"Morris Dovey" wrote in message
...
Doug Miller (in ) said:

| In article , "Morris Dovey"
| wrote:
|| Doug Miller (in ) said:
||
||| In article . com,
||| "tom" wrote:
|||| Pardon me, but do the words "All men (and women and kids) are
|||| created equal" ring a bell? Not "All U.S. citizens", but all
|||| people. Inalienable rights for_all_ people.
|||
||| Just curious where that appears in the U.S. Constitution....
||
|| It doesn't, of course. It appears in the Declaration of
|| Independence - the first act of Congress (which, to my knowledge,
|| has never been repudiated nor repealed by either that Congress nor
|| any subsequent Congress - and which is today enshrined alongside
|| the original hand-written Constitution.)
|
| But neither is it a part of that Constitution, and therefore it is
| not part of the law of the land. And that's probably a good thing,
| too: "... that whenever any form of government becomes destructive
| of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish
| it..." is a call to revolution.

Exactly so. It's also a reminder to _participate_ in a truly
representative government to effect those alterations when, in the
judgement of citizens, alteration is needed. The text of the DoI makes
clear (to my satisfaction, at least, and IMO properly) that revolution
was considered a last resort.

|| The Constitution also does not mention the Magna Carta nor
|| established (British) Common Law (or even "Jefferson's Notes") -
|| and yet these have very real bearing on how the United States
|| are/is governed and what we recognize as the foundation of our
|| system of justice.
||
||| Non-citizens *don't* have the same rights as citizens. One obvious
||| example is that only citizens have the right to vote.
||
|| This is a non sequitur.
|
| It is not a non sequitur at all. The claim was made, implicitly,
| that all have equal rights, regardless of their citizenship or lack
| thereof. And that simply is not true. Citizens _do_ have rights
| that non-citizens lack.

It _doesn't_ follow. At one time (assuming you're a US citizen) _you_
did not have the right to vote. I also, at one time, did not have the
right to vote even though I was an American citizen born in the United
States. That had nothing to do with my legal rights.

Huh? So if the right to vote is not a "legal right" then what is it?

Who gets to vote is defined by the Constitution and by statutes and case
law. Every other right that a person has in the United States is also
defined by the Constitution and by statutes and by case law. So how is
voting different from the "legal rights" about which you are concerned?

Further,
non-citizens in the United States have the right to bring lawsuits in
the same manner as citizens; and are subject to lawsuits in the same
manner as US citizens.

And what provision of law established this "right"?

The right to cast a ballot does _not_ determine an individual human
being's right to fair and just treatment.

You are missing the point entirely.

Citizenship does _not_
determine an individual human being's right to fair and just
treatment.

No, it determines what laws apply to him.