Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:40:49 -0500, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Madison commented on this clause specifically, knowing that people
would try to read it as you have: A Get Out Of Jail Free card for
all manner of Federal government action. He specifically said it
was *not* that - that reading it this way would undermine the doctrine
of enumerated powers that animates the entire Constitution.
Could be. OTOH, it could be only Madison's personal view of the matter.
There were a lot of differing opinions at that convention and a lot of
language was purposely left vague to achieve a consensus. Not that I know
this clause is one of those, just that it could be.
BTW, I accidentally deleted Doug Miller's post, so I'll comment on it
here. He stated something along the lines of "The Constitution is what it
says it is" and goes on to say that the Supreme Court is often wrong in
its interpretation.
Well, I'd sure rather trust some experienced judicial minds to tell me
what the Constitution means than to trust Doug's interpretation. Or my
own for that matter.
If I misquoted you DOug, I apologize.
You miss the point methinks. We are either a nation of laws or not. If
we are, then we should both abide by the existing laws AND use the
lawful mechanisms already in place to change laws that are archaic,
irrelevant, or just plain wrong. Even the Constitution itself is open
to such changes.
What we should not be doing is *ignoring* our laws just because we
don't like the outcome for the moment. You want stronger Federal
action? Fine - convince a supermajority of states to approve it and
modify the Constitution. But cheating the way FDR and all the
so-called "progressives" have done for some 8 decades is neither good
for the nation nor honorable. The US Constitution and indeed the
entire system is built on the doctrine of Enumerated Powers - That the
Feds only get to do something with *specific permission for that
action*. This is not a matter of legal interpretation or some
technical subtlety of law. This is one of the large, unambiguous
cornerstones of our entire government. Attempts to read the exact
inverse of this are obnoxious, wrong, and destructive to both
rule-of-law and liberty itself.
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Tim Daneliuk
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