[BikerNYC]

By focusing on original intent, strict constructionists do themselves a disfavor by making their argument too easily refuted. The issue is not what was intended but what was said.

I agree.

A primary focus on intent assumes that the drafters did a perfect job expressing their intent in the words they used. If we assume that, perhaps, as with any author, what they said is not always what they meant to say, how should we respond? Should we base our laws on what the drafters of the Constitution said or what they intended to say?

If the drafters' intent was to give Congress the power to make some laws abridging the freedom of speech, then they did a poor job in using the words they did to express that intent when they wrote "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech."

By basing interpretation of intent rather than on the words used, and if the drafters did a poor job in expressing their intent, you will eventually have a set of laws that have no relation to the words used in the Constituion. Thus, although the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law," the Courts have looked to the drafters' intent rather than the words of the First Amendment, and we have many laws made by Congress that, in fact, abridge the freedom of speech.

[sourcery]

Ah, I now understand that what some people appear to mean by "intent," and what I mean by "intent," are not at all the same. Others seem to think that "intent" refers to the specific events, issues, and/or situations that motivated the Founders to include certain clauses in the Constitution. I see "intent" as simply referring to the sense of the words as the authors would have understood them in the surrounding textual context, illuminated as necessary by the issues that motivated them, but not limited to only those issues.