Posted on 04/14/2005 6:40:53 PM PDT by kellynla
At Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally wounds President Abraham Lincoln. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.
Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy.
Learning that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene's acclaimed performance in Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater on April 14, Booth plotted the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into a paralyzing disarray.
On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward's home, seriously wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln's private theater box unnoticed, and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. Slashing an army officer who rushed at him, Booth jumped to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]--the South is avenged!" Although Booth had broken his left leg jumping from Lincoln's box, he succeeded in escaping Washington.
The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a cheap lodging house opposite Ford's Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, he died--the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and secret service forces, was finally cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the eight other persons eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed.
Thank you suh.
Bullshit.
An even today, Congress votes to allow a state to join the union, but cannot vote for ratification - the people of the state decide for themselves - UNILATERALLY. Nothing implicit about it.
More BS. The people of the state can vote all they want and ratify anything that they care to, but they are not a state until Congress votes to create them.
Would you please refrain from cursing on thread? There are young children that read this, and I hope and pray that a a former Commander in the US Navy, would have some sense of civility despite our differences. And despite our differences you are perhaps the only person taking your position that consistently conducts themselves as a gentleman - thank you.
But to return to the point in question which you dispute, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that each state is admitted on a equal footing with the orginal states, numerous decisions reflect this holding ['Alabama was admitted into the union, on an equal footing with the original states' - Justice McKinley, Pollard v. Hagan, 44 Howe 212 (1845)]
The people of the state can vote all they want and ratify anything that they care to, but they are not a state until Congress votes to create them.
Just as Congress voting to admit Cuba, Puerto Rico, or Qatar to the Union does not make them a state. Congress votes to allow admission, the state decides UNILATERALLY whether or not they wish to ratify the Constitution. Congress cannot ratify for a state - the people of that state ratify for themselves, just as each state did prior to them.
In the above case the court noted, '[t]he propositions submitted to the people of the Alabama territory, for their acceptance or rejection, by the act of Congress authorizing them to form a constitution and state government for themselves.' Congress passed "An act to enable the people of the Alabama Territory to form a Constitution and State government, and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original States" on 2 Mar 1819. The people of that state met in convention 2 Aug 1819 to ratify. August is after March.
On the contrary, Congress could vote tomorrow to make Puerto Rico a state, because it is United States territory. Your tossing in Cuba and Qatar into the mix is ridiculous because the U.S. has no claim on those territories.
Congress votes to allow admission, the state decides UNILATERALLY whether or not they wish to ratify the Constitution. Congress cannot ratify for a state - the people of that state ratify for themselves, just as each state did prior to them.
Nonsense. Constitutionally the people of the territory in question have no say in the matter. They can vote to ratify whatever they want and it makes no difference, they are not a state. They can adopt a constitution, petition the government till the cows come home, and until Congress votes to admit them then they are not a state.
In the above case the court noted, '[t]he propositions submitted to the people of the Alabama territory, for their acceptance or rejection, by the act of Congress authorizing them to form a constitution and state government for themselves.' Congress passed "An act to enable the people of the Alabama Territory to form a Constitution and State government, and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original States" on 2 Mar 1819. The people of that state met in convention 2 Aug 1819 to ratify. August is after March.
Was Alabama a state as of August 2nd? No. It was not a state until Congess passed a resolution for the admission of Alabama as a state on December 14, 1819. The fact that the people of Alabama ratified a constitution in August meant nothing until Congress acted. The people of Kansas actually adopted four different constitutions before Congress voted to admit them. The actions of the people meant nothing in hastening that process.
Oh, really? Just watch what happens when the Congress or SCOTUS tries to overrule a State's ratification of an amendment to the Constitution.
Let's establish first that no power on God's green earth, and certainly in the U.S. Government, can interfere with the right of the People to go into convention to originate or ratify amendments to the Constitution. You on board with that, Lincoln fan?
Who's going to interfere with that?
Who's going to tell Tennessee or Iowa they can't ratify -- that they can't touch a proposed amendment? Or that they have to? Or that they can't propose an amendment to the Constitution?
You just really are a bit too big for your britches, do you know that? What do you eat for breakfast?
How to you prove a negative?
Not true. Texas was an independent country. Hawaii was an independent kingdom.
You are arguing from an overly specific case of States created from United States Territory, to graft the subordinate position of Territories onto the status of States themselves. You are essentially denying Statehood to the States, and trying to substitute, conceptually at least, the provincial status Hitler thought they had -- on their knees, grovelling before Lincoln and the Congress, the People humiliated by their revolted servants. It's a bogus argument, an ambulance-chaser's argument.
You just like the sound of hobnailed boots, is your problem.
But the process of ratification is not outside the law, it is clearly stated in the Constitution. But I'll go you one further. Once they vote to ratify an amendment, states cannot later rescind that ratification. The people of Virginia or South Carolina can go into convention, vote to rescind ratification of any amendment, and it doesn't mean a damned thing. Their earlier ratification stands. If the ratification process were ultra vieres then shouldn't they be able to?
And California was an independent republic and so was Vermont. What's your point? None of those became states until Congress voted to approve their admission.
You are essentially denying Statehood to the States, and trying to substitute, conceptually at least, the provincial status Hitler thought they had -- on their knees, grovelling before Lincoln and the Congress, the People humiliated by their revolted servants. It's a bogus argument, an ambulance-chaser's argument.
And when you all can't make your point you trot out a Hitler comparison.
Yes, and yes. The "no rescission" buncombe was ginned up by your friends again in the case of the 14th Un-Amendment, or perhaps it was the 14th Amendment-Because-We-Say-So.
Where does the Constitution explicitly allow a state to revoke it's ratification?
So, in your construction, Congress is the King of America, and we are just its subjects........as long as your favorite party is in the majority.
Well, not hardly. The point is that Congress does not have latitude in these matters, to deny States all the powers and qualities of statehood on admission. Neither does Congress, as Hamilton pointed out in Federalist 84, have any latitude in resisting a call by the States for a convention or an amendment to the Constitution.
Congress is not omnipotent, and just because the Constitution mentions something, does not mean that Congress is automatically given power over it -- nor your favorite Executive, Lincoln, either.
You've been huffing too many Commerce Clause expansions and mainlining too many Lincoln decrees.
And when you all can't make your point you trot out a Hitler comparison.
Guess again. I did make my point, you just refuse to grant that it's been made. That's called slothful induction, by the way. Not that you haven't been told about that before.
And the reference to Hitler is appropriate, because his view of the Constitution is unique. We get to compare what a blood-soaked mass murderer thinks the role of the States is with what you think it should be, and voila' -- exact match. You're the one who has some 'splainin' to do, Lucy.
The question isn't, why am I dragging out Hitler? The question is, why do you agree with him?
This isn't a trick question about arithmetic. It's a question about political philosophy. And as your former running buddy #3fan showed, by quoting the neo-Nazi Bertrand Comparet in these threads, your side has a certain appetite for convincing displays of authority . So the comparison is apposite. Your side opened the door -- your side welcomed #3Fan on board, and your side waxed poetic about the justice, fairness, and martial retribution of the Georgia, Carolina, and Shenandoah campaigns, and so it's fair of me to tax your side with the apparent convergence of your side's view of constitutionalism with a genuine dictator's.
After all, the campaign in Georgia, which you have fully approved of, even down to the last gory detail, was a pluperfect exercise in what the Germans only much later came to call Schrecklichkeit, "frightfulness", when they made it an operating doctrine of the Wehrmacht.
On admission. And only congress can choose if and when a state will be admitted.
Congress is not omnipotent, and just because the Constitution mentions something, does not mean that Congress is automatically given power over it -- nor your favorite Executive, Lincoln, either.
And just because the Constitution does not explicitly outline a power that does not mean that that power does not exist.
"The sovereign rights which the individual states renounced in order to form the Reich were voluntarily ceded only to a very small degree. For the most part they had no practical existence or they were simply taken by Prussia under the pressure of her preponderant power. The principle followed by Bismarck was not to give the Reich what he could take from the individual states but to demand from the individual states only what was absolutely necessary for the Reich. A moderate and wise policy."
The questions is, why do you?
The Constitution is silent. It only addresses ratification, not rescission. It's a blank. But as the blank pertains to an act of the People, then the interpretation would have to err on the side of "powers not granted", i.e. in the direction of reserved powers, so that rescission would, like secession, be a reserved power, and any rescission would be valid certainly until the amendment was ratified by the required number of States. Afterward, well, that falls under the heading of "hard cases make bad law".
The above isn't a brassbound opinion nor an unqualified one, but I think it's the right answer.
The general rule is, unless the power is granted Congress and the U.S. Government, it remains with the People.
And the significance of the Ninth Amendment is the same: where the law is silent, liberty rules.
I haven't ventured an opinion on the policies of Bismarck.
But generally, as an exercise in political economy, Germany has sucked for 1500 years. Those guys aren't about to give lessons to anybody. They don't understand politics, because they've never cared about people. They're still barbarians. Techncially adept, even splendidly so perhaps, but still barbarians.
Congress cannot vote to create a state - all Congress can do is vote to admit the state, the people of Peurto Rico would still have to ratify. The vote by Congress does not create a state, or admit the state. It admits the state IF the state ratifies. Congress can vote until Doomsday to admit Purto Rico, but unless PR votes to ratify the Constitution, PR will never be a state.
Your tossing in Cuba and Qatar into the mix is ridiculous because the U.S. has no claim on those territories.
Nonsense, the Constitution simply states that '[n]ew States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union.' Cuba could petition for admission today, Congress could vote to admit, then Cuba would vote up or down on ratification. Again, Congress passed "An act to enable the people of the Alabama Territory to form a Constitution and State government, and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original States" on 2 Mar 1819. The people of that state met in convention 2 Aug 1819 to ratify. August is after March.
Nonsense. Constitutionally the people of the territory in question have no say in the matter. They can vote to ratify whatever they want and it makes no difference, they are not a state. They can adopt a constitution, petition the government till the cows come home, and until Congress votes to admit them then they are not a state.
Congress DID vote for admission, which passed 2 Mar 1819. THEN the state ratified. Then Congress issued a resolution recognizing Alabama as a member of the union - the resolution was NOT a vote on admission, the resolution is formal recognition of the outcome of the ratification.
Section and clause of the Constitution?
The point is the same one that 4ConservativeJustices made above with respect to Alabama.
No State becomes a State until not just one thing but two things happen. Congress accepts, for the Union, the petition of the people of the would-be (or in the case of Texas, the extant) State. But the People must also petition for statehood, and that element is lacking in e.g. the case of Puerto Rico.
You are trying to attribute all discretion and power to Congress, and it isn't that way. That's one argument. The other is that, when a State is a State, it's a State -- without that asterisk you keep trying to hang on it.
And Congress didn't "admit" any of the original 13.
Quit trying to lawyer-talk States down to the level of municipalities. They are a whole other animal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.