It's discussed in Federalist #41, and I once did a big post on that subject, here: Post 112.
Well, first of all, that you shouldn't have pinged me in the other thread. I'll copy what I accidently posted there:
A ringing defense all told, however, there is no real defense in the grammatic construction of Article 1, Section 8. Those are parallel sentences written as paragraphs, and independent, parallel clauses ellipsed in an obvious manner in front. The defense that they are separated by "a mere semi-colon" is way off the mark, grammatically speaking--if what is contended were true, a colon would have been called for, and subsequent dependent clauses.
The argument from reasonable logical dependency is unsound on a couple of counts: 1) paragraph 1 contains bloody details about imposts and excises that are not further constrained in the body of Article 1, Section 8, and 2) the body contains constraints whose subsidiary relationship to paragraph 1 is doubtful, at best. How, for example, do you derive depriving DC of it's own local government from "providing for the Defense, or general welfare?". I don't think you can do that without kicking the phrase into generous interpretation, which is exactly what you are objecting to, is it not?
The argument from original intent doesn't seem to me to bear much weight on examination, either, #41 of the Federalist notwithstanding: The reason we appended the Bill of Rights was that many people looked at this document and didn't in the least see the constraints you seem willing to read into it, based neither on grammar, nor critical reading, nor, as I argue, on original intent. If the strictures you are imagining exist, there's no real need for a Bill of Rights--Article 8, section 1, as you have interpreted it, is an adequate defense against arbitrary government tyranny and plundering.
Finally, lets look at Buckley's old argument about some of this: Are the strictures on military spending that supposedly restrict broad interpretation of paragraph 1 stones in the road that prevented us from paying for a standing profession army to face down the communist nuclear threats with for 40 years? Or do you entertain libertarian fantasies that we could have stood up to Russia with an army of sporadically activated unpaid militia? Or do you think we should have taken paragraph 1 seriously?