Kelo and the 14th Amendment: Exploring a Constitutional Koan

Vanity | 8/21/05 | Mark Edward Vande Pol

[justshutupandtakeit]

You gotta lot of nerve to be aping my name.

[MissouriConservative]

"That Article passed in the House but then failed in the Senate (then consisting of the appointees of State legislatures). The Anti-Federalists had got their way."


That sentence right there sums up why we have the trouble we have today. Our founders set it up that Senators be accountable to the States, it gave the States more leverage and say so in the way the federal government operated. Now the Senators have no accountability, they have no ties to those outside the beltway, unless it's an election year and they need campaign material (get that picture taken with the farmer and his Mrs). They are beholden to the special interests and the 527s.

The first thing that needs to be done is to repeal the 17th Amendment that calls for direct election of Senators

[Carry_Okie]

The same can be said of the way the Warren Court stripped counties of their powers within the States in Reynolds v. Sims.

[Carry_Okie]

The idea that States would have the power to "imprison you for questioning local government" is contrary to all of our founding documents.

You went to public school I take it. Cite me a State constitution that grants such powers to its government.

[Carry_Okie]

Extremely interesting. I have to get to church, but I'll be back for another look. Many very nice points.

Comments?

[SierraWasp]

"which reserved all powers, not enumerated in the Constitution, either to the States or to the people"

Teddy Roosevelt usurped this for the Executive Branch! Then Eisenhour finished the job when the civil rights movement started and he appointed Earl Warren and sent the Guard to Alabama. Idiots like George Wallace egged in on as did that other idiot with his axe handle attitude!!!

Isn't it ironic that these were two Republicans??? (Ike and Teddy, not the other two)

[SierraWasp]

"without due process of law"

That watercourse sure has become choked with turbidity!!!

[SierraWasp]

"They don’t have to contend with raising children"

Almost sounds like gays. You left out spouses if gay marriage goes through...

[SierraWasp]

"Either the communists have better lawyers, or Satan has a sense of humor."

I hear evil... demonic laughter!!!

[SierraWasp]

"It is a koan so simple and elegantly twisted as to mystify any self-respecting Zen Master."

Every law school in the nation, maybe the whirled, teaches them to confuse, then clarify on terms that are favorable to their, or their client's purpose!!!

[Carry_Okie]

There's a ringing pinging in my ears!!!

[PGalt]

Thanks for the post. Bump for tomorrow read. Off to bed.

[Carry_Okie]

Every law school in the nation, maybe the whirled, teaches them to confuse, then clarify on terms that are favorable to their, or their client's purpose!!!

One could call the adversarial system the egullitarian di-erectic.

Or sumthing.

[SierraWasp]

Ok, well, I'm workin my way very thoughtfully through this piece and so far I like it VERY mucho, Senor.

I'm actually a big fan of the adversarial system... partisanship... polarization... competition... winning/losing...

I'm an enemy of "moderation," "power sharing," "bi-lateralism," or any unproductive "cooperation" that has no potential for triumph... especially over evil!!!

We are in an uncompromising WAR between good and evil... moral and phony morality and it's a constant full court press IMO!!!

Your article, here, is productive in that cause of action and so far I like it!!! A lot!!! (Mainly because it articulates with great rhetoric many of the vague thoughts and ideas I've struggled to communicate during my lives...)

[Carry_Okie]

Fergot to ping my dodders.

[Constitution Restoration Act]

"What does Judge Roberts believe was the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, was it to incorporate the Bill of Rights against the States or was it to bar racial discrimination by State and local government?"

Raoul Berger, Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment. ONLINE BOOK IN .PDF format.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/Book.php?recordID=0003

It is the thesis of this monumentally argued book that the United States Supreme Court - largely through abuses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution?has embarked on "a continuing revision of the Constitution, under the guise of interpretation." Consequently, the Court has subverted America’s democratic institutions and wreaked havoc upon Americans’ social and political lives. One of the first constitutional scholars to question the rise of judicial activism in modern times, Raoul Berger points out that "the Supreme Court is not empowered to rewrite the Constitution, that in its transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment it has demonstrably done so. Thereby the Justices, who are virtually unaccountable, irremovable, and irreversible, have taken over from the people control of their own destiny, an awesome exercise of power." This new second edition includes the original text of 1977 and extensive supplementary discourses in which the author assesses and rebuts the responses of his critics.

[Carry_Okie]

Thanks for the reference; I'll definitely take a look at it.

Any comments on the article?

[Constitution Restoration Act]

OUTSTANDING AND REQUIRED READING!

[MamaTexan]

That means the people are in charge at a local level.

No. I believe it means that natural law is always superior to positive law since natural law is for the people and totally positive (statutory) and quasi positive (civil) law is for the various governments.

The two forms of law is what makes us a Republic.

Of the Simplicity of Criminal Laws in different Governments
In republican governments, men are all equal;
equal they are also in despotic governments:
in the former, because they are everything;
in the latter, because they are nothing.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS Book VI By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu