Posted on 12/29/2001 9:27:49 AM PST by Demidog
Congress disposes of property in a variety of ways, pursuant to law and regulation. Sometimes it make a profit.
Some of us are Americans. What country are you posting from?
It's called 'cold violence'. It is doing whatever you can legally and quasi-legally to enhance your bottom line without regard to the circumstances nor the enemies you make. How would you feel if a foreign government was pulling strings and buying influence in the US government and economy?
Then, grab a read on the Anti-Federalist papers! Y'all are full of it if you think this country was founded on the basis that the fedgov was going to be of any size beyond barebones!
Y'all are full of it if you think they wrote this long-winded document if the whole purpose of it was to say: 'the fedgov has power over everything'.
It's a shame Free Republic allows such obvious misstatements about the Constitution to be made here--it is such a 180 degree change from the mission statement of Free Republic to work for the restoration of the Constitutional Republic and bad government. Folks with your attitude should be a DU or some other such liberal site.
Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Our government has the right and the power to track down and eliminate the terrorist organizations who murdered thousands of Americans in the WTC, the wailing of OBL's apologists notwithstanding.
Well, of course. Once you accept the principle that a person, simply by emerging from a womb, can be legally bound in perpetuity without their consent, ANYTHINGS POSSIBLE.
Heck, if I didn't know better I'd think you were a slave. LOL.
Veto of federal public works bill March 3, 1817
To the House of Representatives of the United States:
Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled "An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," and which sets apart and pledges funds "for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense," I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.
"The power to regulate commerce among the several States" can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce with a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared "that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.
A restriction of the power "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.
If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.
James Madison,
President of the United States
And your thoughts on this:
"With respect to the words, "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the details of power connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution ... [that] was not contemplated by the creators."
--James Madison,
Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831 _Madison_ 1865, IV, pages 171-172
Or this:
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.
--James Madison,
Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 _Madison_ 1865, I, page 546
Or how about this one:
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constitutents."
--James Madison,
regarding an appropriations bill for French refugees, 1794
Can you tell us why YOU should be believed rather than the aforesaid James Madison?
For the record, this came from a posting another FReeper made some time back.
As opposed to a right to Congress to regulate commerce betweeen the states. Thanks for demolishing your own argument. :)
He squeaked. Repeatedly.
When a******s like Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers boast about the 'full faith and credit of the United States' I want to throw up--personally, I believe it means their pockets just got lined again!!
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