We the People….
I’m at my end with people. We have a new Supreme Court nominee, one that has no judicial history, and she is being lambasted by the fringe right as a socialist (disregarding the fact that her Harvard Law Thesis was on the failure of socialism in early 20th-century New York). They say they don’t want some one pushing agendas, and since she’s not exactly an attractive woman, she must be a bull-dyke and will legalize gay marriage and force all of us to be fags…or something like that. The point is since they can’t attack her for her record, they had to find something else.
They say that gay rights, abortion, bailouts, and social safety nets aren’t in the Constitution so the Supreme Court has no business hearing cases on them and our representatives have no business legislating them. They say they want the Supreme Court ruling only as the CONSTITUTION dictates. Well now that’s a problem, and here’s why. Here’s a short list of things our supposedly brilliant founding fathers left OUT of the constitution.
1) The right to free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of and from religion.
2) The right to own a gun
3) Protection from housing military
4) The right against unreasonable search and seizure
5) The right of due process, legal representation, and against self incrimination
There are more, but you should have figured out that these are the first five AMENDMENTS to the Constitution, one half of the first ten which made up the Bill of Rights. Do you know what the tenth amendment is? It’s that favorite of the fringe right that rights not granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution are granted to the states. The Constitution as it was written did not include that provision.
See the founding fathers actually were quite brilliant. They foresaw that they were incapable of creating a perfect document for all eternity and so not only left it open, but in fact built in the processes to change it (Article V). They wrote it in such a way as to be interpreted in the standard of the time it is being applied. They specifically intended us NOT to take it literally as it was written in 1777. They wanted “activist judges” and activist legislators to apply the Constitution to the time and for the greatest benefit of America and its citizens.
Did you know the right to a jury in a civil trial is granted for all disputes greater than twenty dollars? The family went to Frugals yesterday and four cheeseburgers, four fries, two wild berry milkshakes, one vanilla milkshake and a root beer came to $22.04. Assuming sales tax is included in the $20 cut-off, I could conceivably go to a jury trial if there was a dispute over my meal. In fact we all agreed it wasn’t very good so maybe there should be. Also, in honor of Mothers Day, your mother wasn’t allowed to vote or own property and Michael Jordan was three-fifths of a human being. Much less eye-roll inducing, if your bank was robbed or went belly up, you were S O L and your money was gone.
Still think we want Strict Constitutionalists?
