Posted on 12/08/2012 4:53:22 PM PST by GreenEyedGal
After the Senate failed to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), Senator John Kerry took to the airwaves with Chris Matthews on Hardball Wednesday, vowing to pass the measure within the first three months of 2013. and demonizing the Republicans who voted against the bill: They argued they were afraid we were giving up sovereignty of the nation and somehow the United Nations would be able to tell us what to do. Neither are true. There is no requirement in this treaty whatsoever that any law in the United States would be changed, no new right would be created that doesn’t exist already in the United States and most importantly because of the terminology of the treaty, the treaty language, that it’s not self-executing, that means nobody has recourse in any court in the United States of America to enforce the treaty. You might ask, why sign up to the treaty, then? The reason is [...]
(Excerpt) Read more at amandakmelson.wordpress.com ...
We the People of these United States of America do not need the UN telling us how to govern our selves. As a disabled person, I am offended this was even considered and voted on in the Senate. The Senate Majority Leadership refuses to vote in a Balanced Budget, but will vote on a UN Treaty?
UN, heal thyself.
The only legitimate topic for a treaty is what occurs BETWEEN nations, not domestic and purely internal matters.
Not only should we never sign anything that comes out of the UN, we should resign from the UN and boot their sorry butts out of our country. Have them move to some third world country like France, Britain, Italy, etc.
Senator John Kerry took to the airwaves...
If he's for something, you can safely bet your last nickel it's anti-American, profoundly stupid, or both.
I hope you’ll contact your senators and tell them to vote against this horrible treaty. It will be back for a vote after the first of the year.
BOTH!
Why did the Founding States limit Congress's powers with Section 8 of Article I if the Founders were also okay if the Senate and Oval Office used their constitutonal authority to negotiote treaties to expand Congress's powers beyond Section 8? It doesn't make sence to me. But more importantly, it didn't make sense to Thomas Jefferson either.
Remembering that Jefferson was 2nd vice president of the US, and therefore president of the Senate, here is what he wrote about common-sense limits on the power of the Senate to negotiate treaties. Note that one of the excerpts below is actually from the Parliamentary Manual that Jefferson had later written for the Senate.
"In giving to the President and Senate a power to make treaties, the Constitution meant only to authorize them to carry into effect, by way of treaty, any powers they might constitutionally exercise." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793.What Article V of the Constitution requires the Senate to do when it negotiates a treaty and recognizes that it doesn't have the Section 8 authority to negotiate an aspect of the treaty is the following. The Senate is supposted to work with the HoR to propose an amendment to the Constitution to the states which, if the states choose to ratify the amendment, will grant Congress the specific new powers that it needs in order for the Senate to negotiote the treaty."Surely the President and Senate cannot do by treaty what the whole government is interdicted from doing in any way." --Thomas Jefferson: Parliamentary Manual, 1812.
Sadly, the Supreme Court compromised Jefferson's common-sense insight to Section 8 limits on the Senate's power to negotiate treaties in 1920. Note that there is no reference to Jefferson's writings concerning treaties in Missouri v. Holland where majority justices sided with Congress's ploy to force the states to comply with bird protection laws negotiated in a treaty with Canada.
Missouri v. HollandIt is also disturbing that activist Justice Holmes had evidently introduced the idea of the "living Constitution" concerning the case.
Wiki: Missouri v. Holland
I should have mentioned the following about Missouri v. Holland in my previous post. Congress had previously made a federal law which protected migrating birds. But the Supreme Court had shot down that law on the basis of the 10th Amendment. So based on Thomas Jefferson’s expert insight to limits on the Senate’s Section 8-limited power to negotiate treaties, Congress actually had no options left under the Constitution to protect migrating birds.
I’m with you! Want to start a movement?!
It’s amazing how our Constitution has been perverted, isn’t it? How did you learn about this?
For example, here's one excerpt from Jefferson's writings where Jefferson had noted that the Founding States had had made the 1st and 10th Amendments in part to clarify that the states had reserved uniquely to themselves the specific power to regulate our 1st Amendment protected rights regardless that the states had made 1A to prohibit such powers to Congress entirely.
"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed; …" --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
The bottom line is that FDR's activist justices had essentially rewritten history about Jefferson to nuke the Constitution to allow Congress to do what it pleased. But when you get a grip on the Founding States' division of federal and state government powers s evidenced by the Jefferson excerpt above, then you not only read the Constitution and its history differently, but you will be able to spot corruption in all three branches of the federal government a mile away.
On the other hand, possibly many lawmakers regard themselves as true patriots, but were taught law by radical professors who they didn't know were enemies of the Constitution.
Then according to this, it would seem the States had every right to decide as they wished on matters of speech, religion, etc., but not the federal government. Then I wonder, well, what was the purpose of the Supreme Court? It was supposed to act as a balance of power for Congress, I’m guessing, and rule on what laws were issued by them? I’m also guessing the way the SCOTUS reviews these cases that come from states were not intended? Like SCOTUS deciding to hear the case on the ban against homosexual marriage? I’m a little confused now.
Your statement was arguably true before the ratification of the 14th Amendment. But even though the states still have the the 10th Amendment protected power to regulate our 1st Amendment protected rights regardless that activist justices want everybody to believe otherwise, Sec. 5 of 14A gives Congress the power to make federal laws which limit state powers to regulate such rights. (My reservation about what Sec. 5 actually does is that activist justices have taken the country on unconstitutional tangents concerning our rights to the extent that, at this point in time, I'm not aware of specific examples of such 14A-based federal laws.)
And although 10A protected state power to address religious issues, for example, might sound like a bad thing to citizens who have been indoctrinated to wrongly think that the Founding States had intended for our 1A protected rights to be absolute, this is the same power by which a state can authorize the teaching of religious beliefs in public schools for example. And imo it is up to local majority voters to decide if such things will be taught in local public schools as long as local policy does not infringe on anybody's 14A-protected rights.
If a given cummunity is 100% a particular faith for example, then why can't local public schools, if they are paid to operate entirely by the local taxpayers, teach the faith of the community in their schools?
And where federal funding of local schools is a concern, please bear in mind that Congress has no Article I, Section 8 authority to tax and spend for public school purposes.
Finally, here is my Supreme Court "license" to interpret the Constitution, just in case anybody is wondering what my credentials are.
"3. The Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning; where the intention is clear, there is no room for construction and no excuse for interpolation or addition." --United States v. Sprague, 1931.
You mean Frogistan?
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