[Fester Chugabrew]

Murder, theft, adultery, and slander qualify as gross misbehavior. All of these are subject/objects of law enforcement at nearly every level in case you haven’t noticed. And if you talked to me like that as my son I’d smack your ass from here to kingdom come, verbally at least. Hopefully the proper authorities would also tame your arrogant mouth as well. Grow up, Sonny.

[Finny]

Murder, theft, adultery, and slander qualify as gross misbehavior.

So, what's the dif between a crime and gross misbehavior? How much farting in a crowded elevator does it take for it to change from "annoyance" to "gross misbehavior"?

And if you talked to me like that as my son I’d smack your ass from here to kingdom come, verbally at least. Hopefully the proper authorities would also tame your arrogant mouth as well. Grow up, Sonny.

You really, truly, belong in the Democrat party. You are presumptuous, arrogant, controlling, and a tyrant with apparently ZERO respect for the rights of anyone to live by a different code than your own.

[Finny]

Here is where you can prove whether you are a coward/blowhard, or a man of sense. A very simple way you can prove one or the other. Please read on and take my challenge.

And if you talked to me like that, as my son I’d smack your ass from here to kingdom come, verbally at least.

What specific words in my post #69, the one that offended you so deeply, do you think are so deserving of such punishment from you? BE SPECIFIC. How did I address you with disrespect?

PLEASE cut-and-paste the exact phrasing that would, if I were your son, tick you off so much that you'd "verbally smack my ass from here to kingdom come."

PLEASE cut-and-paste the exact phrasing in that post, that prompted you to respond: Hopefully the proper authorities would also tame your arrogant mouth as well.

Either you will be a coward and write all kinds of reasons why you cannot respond with cut-and-paste examples and shouldn't have to ...

... or you will cut-and-paste examples of my words from the post that justify your anger and desire to punish me.

You are either a coward/blowhard/tyrant, or you are a sensible man. PROVE which one you are, please, if you have the integrity to do so.

[Springfield Reformer]

Murder, theft, adultery, and slander qualify as gross misbehavior. All of these are subject/objects of law enforcement at nearly every level

No one here is arguing that these are not bad behaviors.  They are.  Drunk or otherwise incompetent driving is reprehensible too.  But the question is this:  Under a system where we are ruled by laws and not men, and the supreme law is our Constitution, what is the proper legal processing of these bad events?  Ohoian is right on the money.  Monitoring and curbing the bad behavior of private individuals falls under state jurisdiction, not federal.  The federal power was designed as a glue that keeps the states as political entities in cooperative and beneficial relationship with each other.  The Bill of Rights recognizes individual rights, but not in order to protect one private individual from another, but to protect the private individual from abuse of the state or federal power.  As between private individuals, the firewall of protection is the police power.

As for the General Welfare clause, it has been rightly observed that  once you give it open-ended interpretation, divorcing it from its context of federal spending under the enumerated powers (and it has nothing to do with enforcement against bad private behavior in even the wildest stretch), you can use it to totally subvert all the other enumerated limits.  From U.S. v Butler, 1936:

(12) If the novel view of the General Welfare Clause now advanced in support of the tax were accepted, that clause would not only enable Congress to supplant the States in the regulation of agriculture and of all other industries as well, but would furnish the means whereby all of the other provisions of the Constitution, sedulously framed to define and limit the power of the United States and preserve the powers of the States, could be broken down, the independence of the individual States obliterated, and the United States converted into a central government exercising uncontrolled police power throughout the Union superseding all local control over local concerns. P. 75.

Available here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/297/1

In fact, the argument for ObamaCare was made in part on the basis of the General Welfare clause. Because once you admit that "general welfare" might mean anything, you have no way to stop it from being used to circumvent the enumerated powers.  It makes the Constitution into a self-destructive document.  In statutory interpretation, you have to approach a statutory text as NOT designed to undermine its own reason for being.  It is as if to say the Constitution was set up as a limit on federal power, except for everything the federal power feels like being in control of, which would of course be nonsense, and we do not accept that the founders intended nonsense.  For a good article taking this even further, see here:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/01/Enough-Is-Enough-Why-General-Welfare-Limits-Spending

Indeed, this is one of those debates it would be great to resolve with a clarifying amendment to the Constitution.  The abuse has gone on too long. Time to stop.

Peace,

SR

[Finny]

Please be so kind as to review my home page.

I am so ... astounded that a self-defined "conservative" could write: Hopefully the proper authorities would also tame your arrogant mouth as well.

My home page will inform you as to EXACTLY how I was raised with regard to arrogance and respecting "proper authorities." See my tagline if you want to know Who I recognize as a "proper authority."

[marktwain]

Adultery stopped being prosecuted as a crime long ago. The only place I have seen it prosecuted in the last 15 years is the military, and then only as a political tool.

Officers entangling themselves with enlisted is another matter, but even it is winked at if the participants are discreet.