Posted on 12/25/2009 1:56:41 PM PST by Jim Robinson
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that Congress has the authority to mandate that people buy health insurance and that there is no constitutional limit on Congress’ power to enact such mandates, adding that this unlimited authority stemmed from the Commerce clause of the Constitution.
And apparently 59 other Democrat senators agree with her.
It is my understanding that the intent of the commerce clause is to assign the responsibility of regulating commerce (the transportation and trading of goods with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes) to the central government, taking the law-making responsibility for “inter-state trade and foreign trade” out of the hands of state government. Its purpose is to ensure that trade flows smoothly and unrestricted among the states and that foreign trade CAN be restricted by taxes and tariffs, etc, by the congress where necessary and appropriate to promote the domestic economy.
It was never intended to regulate the agricultural industry itself, or the manufacturing process of products or goods, or services, and definitely NOT to regulate or tax individual FREE citizens.
And the commerce clause was never intended to regulate trade among private citizens, nor does it regulate intra-state commerce, nor does it override states rights to govern themselves. The 10th amendment rules!
We the people continue to enjoy our God-given unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness also including among others the constitutional rights to private property, security in our homes and private affairs, due process, presumption of innocence, right to trial before a jury of our peers, etc, and the rights to self-defense and to defend ourselves and our property and our posterity against tyrannical government!
Somebody please tell me where I'm wrong.
The original intent of the commerce clause would have applied to "commerce" as it was understood at the time. "Commerce" was a separate and distinct entity from both manufacturing and agriculture, and involved only the act of trade, not the articles of trade themselves. Beware of bureaucrats waving dictionaries. They'll screw you every time.
"We need a Conservative President... "
Correction, we need a conservative president that'll adhere strictly to the constitution for the United States.
For as long as I can remember every single president (R or D) has been referring to these united states as a "democracy".
Haven't any of these people ever recited the pledge of alliegence? "To the republic for which it stands...". How about read the constitution for the United States, article 4, section 4?
It's funny how I hear the democratic party is called the left wing party and the republican party is called the right wing party. Yet no one seems to understand, they're wings attached to the same bird heading off in the same direction.
Some say the republican party will toss the citizens a bone every once and a while and the democrats will leave a little more meat on the bone. Guess what? I'm sick and tired of being sweet talked by both parties and getting boned all the time.
America, stop getting boned.
The only way to return to the original intent of our forefathers and reestablish our constitutional representative republic is by not wasting your vote on someone that'll fly over to you and give you the bone is to vote:
The raw new deal was / is unconstitutional as well. Article 4, section 4 of the constitution for the United States clearly states that the United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.
FDR's "New Deal" unconstitutionally turned us from a constitutional representative republic to a legislative democracy.
Every single bill, law, etc that has passed since the raw"new deal" was enacted is null and void.
How many years have you studied at robertpaulsen’s knee and you still don’t know how to run his circular reasoning scam? Sad, you’re his only pup and you’re such a disappointment. He would never try to ride it out on a single point. You have to learn to pivot to an entirely different point of false logic. Didn’t you ever notice he always used at least three?
Congress may prohibit trade. You lost.
The case dealt with the regulation of monopolies under an Act of Congress. Justice Fuller, writing for a divided court, held that the Act's restraints on commerce did not reach to manufactures. Fuller wrote, "Commerce succeeds to manufacture, and is not a part of it." He provided no authority for his unprecedented contention.
In his dissent, Justice Harlan demonstrated that Fuller's position stood in contradiction to Gibbons v. Ogden. Harlan wrote,
"It is said that manufacture precedes commerce, and is not a part of it. But it is equally true that when manufacture ends, that which has been manufactured becomes a subject of commerce; that buying and selling succeed manufacture, come into existence after the process of manufacture is completed, precede transportation, and are as much commercial intercourse, where articles are bought to be carried from one state to another, as is the manual transportation of such articles after they have been so purchased. The distinction was recognized by this Court in Gibbons v. Ogden, where the principal question was whether commerce included navigation. Both the court and counsel recognized buying and selling or barter as included in commerce. Chief Justice Marshall said that the mind can scarcely conceive a system for regulating commerce, which was "confined to prescribing rules for the conduct of individuals in the actual employment of buying and selling, or of barter."
Marshall's analysis has stood the test of time, Harlan's analysis has stood the test of time, Fuller's has not.
Manufacture precedes buying and selling. Where Congress determines that regulation of the manufacture is necessary to regulate the buying and selling of a given product or service, the regulation necessarily falls with the power of Congress to regulate trade.
In the case of marijuana, the Court noted in Raich that given the fungible nature of the illicit drug that there was no way for Congress to know in advance whether any given manufacture of marijuana would enter interstate commerce, so that regulation of the manufacture was necessary for Congress to control the sale that such manufacture would precede.
I've never seen that point disproved.
The ‘logic’ of an unrepentant statist!
Point not addressed. Again.
John Marshall (September 24, 1755 – July 6, 1835)
United States House of Representatives (1799 – 1800)
Secretary of State (1800 – 1801)
Chief Justice of the United States (1801 – 1835)
Selling things that are completely prohibited is not trade. You’re nuts. ;-)
False. There's a massive interstate trade in prohibited illicit drugs.
unless we make it very clear on topics twisted by the federal govt ( supreme court ) via convention. we are the final say.
It should be brought up at the next trade summit.
Enacted in 1970. You’re forty years behind.
“The United States is a party to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, and other international conventions designed to establish effective control over international and domestic traffic in controlled substances.” —21 USC Sec. 801 (7)
That’s not part of a trade summit. And why doesn’t the Dept. of Commerce have control over regulation and enforcement of this “prohibited illicit” (redundancy yours) commerce in drugs? Very strange.
“The United States is a party to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, and other international conventions designed to establish effective control over international and domestic traffic in controlled substances.” —21 USC Sec. 801 (7)
It's an international trade agreement, that the United States is a party to, that places restrictions the trade in illicit drugs. Among other things it provides that:
"Manufacture" means all processes, other than production, by which drugs may be obtained and includes refining as well as the transformation of drugs into other drugs.
There is a massive trade in prohibited drugs both domestically and across national borders.
Pesky old reality.
James Madison to Joseph C. Cabell
13 Feb. 1829
Letters 4:14--15
For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.
James Madison to Professor Davis
1832
Letters 4:247, 251--54
Attempts have been made to show, from the journal of the Convention of 1787, that it was intended to withhold from Congress a power to protect manufactures by commercial regulations. The intention is inferred from the rejection or not adopting of particular propositions which embraced a power to encourage them. But, without knowing the reasons for the votes in those cases, no such inference can be sustained.
The quote in post #257 conveniently clarifies his feelings about that. Much to the destruction of your position. From the same man’s own pen.
1832 is AFTER 1829.
Much to the destruction of your position.
Not in the slightest.
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