Posted on 06/04/2014 9:45:10 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, stumbled Tuesday over basic American history, crediting Thomas Jefferson for authorship of the Bill of Rights during a debate over the First Amendment and campaign finance.
“I think if Thomas Jefferson were looking down, the author of the Bill of Rights, on what’s being proposed here, he’d agree with it. He would agree that the First Amendment cannot be absolute,” Mr. Schumer said.
While Jefferson is deemed the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, he was not intimately involved in the writing of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, which is the first 10 amendments to that founding document.
Indeed, Jefferson was out of the country, serving as minister to France at the time of both the Constitution convention and the congressional debate over the Bill of Rights. His fellow Virginians, James Madison and George Mason, are usually credited with being more influential in the process — Mason for being among the most forceful in demanding the protections of such a Bill of Rights, and Madison for being the political muscle that got them approved.
“Madison’s support of the bill of rights was of critical significance,” the National Archives writes on its web page. “One of the new representatives from Virginia to the First Federal Congress, as established by the new Constitution, he worked tirelessly to persuade the House to enact amendments.”
The Archives goes on to recount Madison’s efforts to shepherd a package of 17 amendments through the House in 1789 — a number that was later trimmed to 12 in the Senate, before being submitted to the states.
Of those, 10 were ratified fairly quickly. An 11th was ratified two centuries later, becoming the 27th Amendment.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Who remembers the “Who are those guys?” moment at Monticello when Al Gore toured as VP?
Details schmetails!
Another schumerism
For liberals, history started at breakfast this morning...............case in point...................
Dumber than a sack full of Bidens.
This repulsive cretin had the gall to accuse Sen. Ted Cruz of wanting to protect child porn from the floor of the Senate yesterday.
Of course, that was perfectly fine with the equally evil Harry Reid, and there was no reprimand for his outrageous remarks. God will judge them.
Potatoe
Brain dead Chuck Schumer who pushed out patriotic Al D’Amato because he was “dumb.”
Just imagine if his name was Dan Quayle instead of Up-Chuck Schumer.
If you put Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Boxer and Sheila Jackson in a bag tied to the bow of a boat and threw it overboard to keep it from floating away, the anchor left aboard would have a higher IQ than the bag. And the boat would still float away.
Chuck the Schmuck !
Chuck Schumer: The Nancy Pelosi of the East coast.
Watching Schumer's facial expression, and the look in his beady eyes, when he was still in the House, at the time of the Congressional hearing on the Waco massacre, which he, alone, appeared determined to defend, I had mental images of revealing pictures of Heinrich Himmler, who orchestrated many a massacre of dissenting civilians in an earlier era.
That Schumer would dare to suggest that he has anything in common with Jefferson; or that Jefferson would not understand that the First Amendment's direct & specific limitation on Congress, meant precisely what it says; tells us either that Chuckie is stupid or that Chuckie is unscrupulous.
(No Jefferson didn't draft it. His personal friends did. But once again, Chuckie demonstrates his unwillingness to have his "Big Government" pursuit in anyway defined by personal integrity. Unless he is in fact really stupid--I mean grade school failure stupid--he has none.)
William Flax
Correction if I might:
For liberals, history started at a government funded breakfast this morning
God will judge them.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
He most certainly will.
We definitely know their constituents will not oust them.
Afraid:...Yes, I remember ‘Mama Al’ and that idiotic statement. The scariest thing about this country is that WE almost had him as pResident...(as ‘bad’ as Bush was)....
if the D’s would have run (most) anyone other than JF’nKerry, Bush probably would have been out.
Then again, the LIBS didn’t think Clinton stood a chance of winning -they hadn’t ‘counted’ on Perot, just gave him the shot to ‘shut him up’.
We got ‘stuck’ with him a 2nd time because GOPe figured Bob Dole was a ‘good’ choice....
We are stuck with BOII because of a stupid GOPe...
MAYBE, just MAYBE, one of these days, we will learn.
Note the following excerpt from Jefferson's
"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws.1 But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.1 But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged, at the era of the reformation, the corruptions of christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.1 Government is just as infallible, too, when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex. The government in which he lived was wise enough to see that this was no question of civil jurisdiction, or we should all have been involved by authority in vortices. In fact the vortices have been exploded, and the Newtonian principles of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desireable? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves. But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. “No two, say I, have established the same.” Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments? Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all. The experiment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported; of various kinds indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve peace and order: or if a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled with it. They do not hang more male-factors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious dissentions. On the contrary, their harmony is unparallelled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which they differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws. It is true we are as yet secured against them by the spirit of the times. I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."
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