[The_Pickle]

azturk: this tiraide is not directed towards you, it is my response to the author of this peice of tripe:

I am getting so tired of the silly A## "The Constitution doesn't guarantee the right to (insert right here)" argument!!!!! The Constitution didn't give us our rights!!! We are endowed with certain inalienable rights by our CREATOR Not the government! Not the Constitution! This was addressed in the 9th amendment:

The enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution should not be constured to deny or disparage others retained by the people

I do so wish that people that want to write about constitutional law would actually read the Constitution!!!

That being said I agree that the desicion regarding raced based addmissions completley ignored the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. The really interesting thing was that the justices sited the very same amendment that they had previously trampled, to uphold (rightly so in my belief) the overturning of the the Texas sodomy law on the grounds that it violated said amendment.

As for the california case: As vile as it may seem the USSC upheld its duty, as it did in the decision regarding the Florida Supreme's court usurping legislative power in 2000, and decided that you simply can't change the rules in the middle of the game. ex post facto laws protect affect us all as they provide the government with additional tools to criminalize certain actions after the fact and prosecute as if the action had been criminal all along.

[The_Pickle]

"ex post facto laws detrimentally affect us all as they provide the government with additional tools to criminalize certain actions after the fact and prosecute as if the action had been criminal all along.

" Fingers going faster than thoughts.

[gitmo]

You're right. We should use the verbs "enumerate", "acknowledges", "specifically recognizes", etc.

I got called on the carpet on FR for making this mistake yesterday. I pled guilty.

[psychoknk]

The Constitution didn't give us our rights!!! We are endowed with certain inalienable rights by our CREATOR Not the government!

I beg to differ. Even the Constitution dances around this issue, for it states that governments are the ones that really secure this rights. Your "CREATOR" can grant the person any rights he wants to grant them, but if they aren't secured by the government, they do not exist. Our rights are inalienable so long as our governments choose not to alienate them.

You don't even have to look very far (geographically) to see where one of the inalienable rights was alienated. True, there was a war, and one of the results was a return of this right (as per the second part of the statement you are referring to), however, slavery wasn't the reason that war was started.