Better brush up on those reading skills, schoolboy. I never mentioned Bush by name,

"With all due respect are you trying to say since Madison was the primary author of the constitution that most of those ideas are his and his alone. Dont you think he probably took the collective thought about things and wrote those down or are you interpreting that to mean that Madison thought up those on his own?"


Posted by idpanicman

Any guess as to why these are 2 of the biggest stories?

Okay that was hyperbole.

And that changed our way of life how?

Frisking 80 year old women at the airport for example.

Allowing the gov't to seize your medical records for another.

Did Mr. Clinton incur say 2 trillion dollars in debt as a result?

No, it's telling it like it is.

If "it is" causes fear, then change "is"

I'm not a liberal, BTW, if you'd bother to notice...I'm something of a libertarian.

Socialism doesn't WORK, it's not illegal...there's a difference.

Who or what body is the final authority?

Yes, no one has the last word on the meaning of the Constitution ultimately. That I agree with. But depending on our times, who is in the court, what is happening with lower court rulings etc, the specific meanings of the Constitution get changed around and interpreted.

Ironically, if you think the Constitution is rock solid with no interpretation then you are advocating a totalitarian system.

If you read only one part of the constitution in isolation of all other parts you'll likely get a shoddy ruling.

SCOTUS needs to take all parts of the constitution that apply

I guess you have to figure out what "general welfare" means and determine the extent of the meaning of "necessary and proper".

Just as something else to chew on, here is a portion of the Marbury v. Madison case.

Sam, I'm not dismissing the 10th. I'm asking, what does "General Welfare" refer to?

For that matter, what s the correct interpretation of "necessary and proper".

This appears to me to give complete and total control of how alcohol is distributed within a state to that state. So, couldn't a state, if it wanted to, ban the sale of any beer made outside its borders to its own citizens while allowing its citizens to buy all the beer they want from in-state beer manufacturers?

That sounds like a reasonable approach to me. However, what happens if there is an inconsistency or lack of clarity but you can't get a constitutional amendment passed to clear it up?

But Sam, that's not what the constitution says.

That power, "to provide for the...general welfare" is not limited by the powers that are listed underneath in in Section 8. It is a power that is listed in addition to the other's in section 8.

I don't see how you take "general welfare" out of the enumerate powers since it's right there in black and white alongside all the other enumerated powers. It's either one of the enumerated powers or it isn't and I don't see anything in the construction of Section 8 that would suggest it's anything else but that.

I don't see how you take "general welfare" out of the enumerate powers since it's right there in black and white alongside all the other enumerated powers.

in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

Basically we're faced with two sides here, one side just wants to spend money and could care less what the constitution is about, and one side that wants to defend and uphold the law of the land.

Those folks who try to argue that the "general welfare" phrase carries little weight are beating a dead horse. Very little (if any) "general welfare" type legislation that was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President has ever been successfully challanged as unconstitutional before the US Supreme Court. Medicare, Social Security, minimum wage, ...the list is almost endless.

Are you implying that social security is unconstitutional?

If circumstances become so urgent doesn't Congress have a duty to assist the citizenry in whatever way possible as long as they follow the steps in implementing a law?

If something is deemed unconstitutional both sides have an obligation to stop it.

If you don't like the system then leave.

In fact, Sam's interpretation of the GenWel Clause isn't uncommon at all. The broad Hamiltonian view wasn't adopted by the Court until the 1930s. And even today a large number of scholars would argue the Court got it wrong then and recommend the narrow MightySamuraian interpretation.

Today's conservatives would not be recognized by the conservatives of the turn of the 20th century. Today's conservatives support medicare. They support social security. Both these things would have been shocking to the Social Darwinist of the Conservative class back then.

No, sir, they do not. The kind of logic that you are using can and has been used to justify the most evil totalitarian acts in history, all in the name of "assisting the citizenry".