Analyzing The 2nd Amendment

The first in a series of articles on the importance of the upcoming general election

Does the Second Amendment guarantee a right to states rather than an individual right to choose to own firearms? One clue to the answer is looking at who supports each position. The few law-review articles supporting the states'-right view all come from advocates, most of them employed by or associated with anti-gun groups.

The Verdict of Scholarship Yet, intellectual honesty compels many far more important scholars to accept the standard model of the Amendment as an individual's right despite personal anti-gun feelings. Famed constitutional lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who defended O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow, is a former ACLU national board member who admits he "hates" guns and wants the Second Amendment repealed. Yet, says Dershowitz: "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."

Another former ACLU national board member, Duke Law School's William Van Alstyne, who is among the premier constitutional scholars of modern times, contemptuously dismisses the states'-right view. "If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the 18th century for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis." He emphasizes that to take civil liberties seriously requires respecting the Second Amendment no less than freedom of speech and religion and the other rights in the First Amendment. [Van Alstyne, "The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms," 43 Duke Law Journal 1236 (1994).]

Another major figure in modern constitutional law is Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe who is anti-gun and a liberal. Earlier versions of his famous text endorsed the states'-right view, but, having examined the historical evidence for himself, he now reluctantly admits the Amendment guarantees "a right (admittedly of uncertain scope) on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes." [Tribe, American Constitutional Law, Vol. 1, pp. 901-902 (2000)].

RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE Anti-gun writers cite my article (83 Michigan Law Review, pp. 204-273) as the definitive standard-model treatment. Yet, remarkably, these anti-gun writers give only that one initial mention. If they have answers to the 50 pages of evidence I offer for the standard model, they neglect to offer them. So I shall limit myself to just two examples of my unrefuted evidence.

Written by James Madison, the Bill of Rights was enacted as a single document. Whenever it says "right of the people," it does so to describe individual rights. To ignore this point you must think that in the First Amendment Madison used "right of the people" to describe an individual right. But then, 16 words later, he used it in the Second Amendment meaning a state's right. But then, 46 words later, the Fourth Amendment says "right of the people" meaning an individual right again. And then "right of the people" was used in the Ninth Amendment to mean--guess what--a right of the people.

In fact, throughout the Bill of Rights and the Constitution the word "right" is always used to refer to something individuals have and never used to refer to powers possessed by government. Such powers are always called "power" or "authority."

THE PURPOSE OF THE MILITIA Anti-gun advocates imply from the Amendment's reference to a "well-regulated militia" that government can regulate gun ownership. But that is totally outside the 18th century usage of "well regulated," which means "well trained" and "operating properly." Likewise, anti-gun advocates think the mention of militia show the right to arms applies only to states arming their militias. But in the 18th century "militia" did not mean "army" or "soldiers." The militia was a system of laws under which every man and every household was to have guns (unorganized militia), while most men of military age were required to appear with their guns when called out for drill or war (organized militia). The arms of the militia were the personally owned arms of its members.

It is somewhat misleading, however, to see the Second Amendment as a right to have arms for collective defense against tyranny or foreign enemies. The Amendment's central theme was what our Founding Fathers saw as the basic human right to possess arms for individual self-defense. But the Founders did not misconstrue that, as we so often do, as just a right to defense against nonpolitical criminals. The Founders believed individuals needed to be armed for political self-defense (e.g., Jews resisting the Gestapo) and that, in the ultimate extreme, people must join together to overthrow tyranny. (Note that the literal meaning of the term "revolution" was an uprising seeking to bring government back to its original free form, not to produce some new form.) [Kates, "The Second Amendment and the Ideology of Self-Protection," 9 Constitutional Commentary 87 (1992).]

WHAT LAWS DOES THE AMENDMENT PRECLUDE? The NRA's experts like Prof. Steve Halbrook believe the Amendment does more than I feel it does. And another expert, Prof. Nelson Lund, thinks neither Halbrook nor I interpret the Amendment broadly enough. We all agree, however, that the Amendment guarantees every responsible law-abiding adult freedom of choice regarding guns.

So assault-weapon bans are unconstitutional. "Assault weapons" are just semiautomatic rifles differing only in that they are down-powered from those of the WWII era. Banning them infringes on the freedom of law-abiding, responsible adults to choose which firearms they wish to have. Magazine limitations are invalid for the same reason.

So-called Saturday Night Special bans are valid only insofar as a particular model of firearm is provably unreliable or dangerous to use in the manner it is reasonably foreseeable to be used. The reasons for most SNS bans--that the guns are small, light and/or inexpensive--are invalid under the Second Amendment. Nor can states push gun prices to astronomical levels by requiring that guns incorporate dubious or unnecessary safety features.

LIMITS ON THE AMENDMENT The Amendment covers only small arms. Neither RPGs, cannons, grenades nor the other super-destructive devices of modern war are covered.

Guns may be banned to juveniles, convicted felons, aliens and the insane, all of whom have been excluded from the right to arms in free societies dating back to ancient Greece. (Juveniles have the right to use firearms under parental supervision.)

Though Professors Lund and Halbrook disagree, I think gun registration and license requirements to own are valid. What is invalid is licensing as traditionally practiced in New York. For licensing to be valid, licenses must be granted to all law-abiding, responsible applicants and within some very short period like 72 hours. If New York cannot manage to accomplish this then it cannot constitutionally require a license to own a firearm.

The right to bear arms includes a right to carry them but not concealed. On the other hand, if a license is required for concealed carry, equal standards must be applied. If retired cops routinely get licenses, so must everyone else who may be in danger from their connection with the justice system. And if the wealthy and influential routinely get licenses, so must the entire responsible, law-abiding adult populace.

VINDICATING THE RIGHT TODAY The Supreme Court has briefly referred to the Amendment in almost 40 different opinions, all showing that it guarantees an individual right to arms. But the court has never provided a full and lengthy exposition of the Amendment. In fact, several lengthy and considered opinions would be required to illuminate the Amendment's various aspects.

To any judge willing to follow the law, it must be clear that the Amendment guarantees the freedom of all responsible, law-abiding adults to choose to possess firearms for personal and family defense. We must depend on the president to appoint such judges and the Senate to confirm them.

Several vacancies on the U.S. Supreme court are likely during the next presidential term. Many appointments are also expected on lower federal and appellate courts. The president and members of the senate who are elected in November will play a major role in the rights of gun owners for many years.

viz: "The Indians defended themselves with automatic weapons like RPK-machineguns and AK47's." below cf.:

Special Report
Text: Rob Tuinstra
http://www.highlife.nl/archief/2001/2001-3/sigaretten_eng.htm
Tobacco industry under fire for involvement
Smuggle cigarette is coming on

It should have been a celebration day. The worlds biggest cruise ferry 'the pride of Rotterdam' was sailing out for the first time on May 2nd from Rotterdam to the English harbor Hull. On board were numerous dignitaries that should give the first trip of the over 300 million guilders costing luxury showpiece of the ship owner P&O extra cachet. The festivities got a black border when it turned out that besides all invited guests, also an uninvited load of cigarettes with a value of one million guilders was on board. The feast more or less collapsed but the catch meant for the British customs not more then business as usual. More and more cigarettes are getting smuggled and this will only increase. In the meanwhile the tobacco industry is under fire for involvement. Several counties, and also the European Union, had taken legal actions against several tobacco multinationals. A story about the smoky world of big money.
confiscated cigarettes are being destroyed (foto ANP)

Trading smuggled cigarettes is unstoppable. This appears from figures of Dutch customs. In 1997 19 million cigarettes were caught, one year later it were 70 million. In 1999 the number grew to 250 million cigarettes. And that rise went on and on. Last year, over 340 million cigarettes were intercepted. So the Dutch Government missed 80 million guilders. The checking on cigarettes have sharpened. The famous drug dog got company of trained tobacco dogs and in for instance the harbor of Rotterdam, they nowadays use special roentgen apparatus for containers.
In other countries there is even more smuggling. Especially England is missing out billions of tax. From an investigation of the authorities appeared that one out of three cigarettes that is smoked in the United Kingdom is smuggled. Harbors like Rotterdam and Antwerp play a big role. This smuggle cost the British state in 1999 over 7 million guilders. Experts of the World Bank and the World health Organization think that the tobacco industry is working together with criminal organizations. According to reports of these organizations the tobacco producers want to force the British government to decrease the tax by smuggling. Also the producers wanted to create new markets by smuggling, now the amount of smokers is decreasing by information campaigns in the Western world.

St. Regis Mohawk Indians

The smuggling of cigarettes is a world wide billion business. That appears for instance form a huge smuggling operation between the United States and Canada, in which according to the Canadian Government, the American Mafia, the Indian tribe and a cigarette producer RJReynolds-MacDoanld Inc. (the producer of for instance Camel) are involved. This huge smuggling operation was one of the most successful ones in history, because the smuggling was so huge that the Canadian Government was forced to decrease the tax one a packet of cigarettes.
In the book 'the Merger' of Jeffrey Robinson this smuggling operation is extensively described. Shortly put the following has happened: to prevent Canadian youngsters from smoking the tax on a packet of cigarettes was highly increased between 1984 and 1993. That had two results. At first the amount of young smokers decreased, but this was followed by an increase of smuggled cigarettes.
Kingpin of this smuggle was a businessman named Larry Miller that among others imported cigarettes to the American Indian reservations. By his friendship with the Mohawk Indian Tony Laughing he smuggled via the Akwesasne Reservation billions of cigarettes.
The Akwesasne Reservation is for many years a kind of no man's land that extends over parts of Canada and the United States. On over 5,600 acres live 11,000 St. Regis Mohawk Indians that claim to live in a sovereign state. They belong to the six tribes of the Iroquois Nation, that according to the Jay-Pact from 1794 live on sovereign land. The Indians think they have nothing to do with Canadian or American laws, and especially not with the border between both counties. Their claim of living in their own state got world wide fame after they stopped a golf course on a piece of ground that they consider to be a holy cemetery.
That went not very peaceful on both sides. The Canadian Government sent hundreds of heavily armed members of the riot police. Only after an almost three months lasting siege, the growing police force cleared a camp with Mohawk Indians. The Indians defended themselves with automatic weapons like RPK-machineguns and AK47's.

No man's land

With the help of this no man's land between Canada and the United States the smuggling operation was for a long time without any problems. The method of working was simple. Cigarettes were exported from Canada tax-free and would be transported via the transit sheds in the American part of the Akwesasne Reservation to Russia. Of course nothing of this would happen, and sometimes the same day the cigarettes were back in Canada. On a certain moment one out of three cigarettes that were smoked in Canada was smuggled in this way into the country. Attracted by the cheap smuggled cigarettes, many young Canadians started smoking. Between 1991 and 1996 the amount of smoking teenagers rise with 48 percent. At last the government was forced to decrease the tax with almost three guilders per packet. The Canadian tobacco lobby and criminal middlemen like Larry Miller could go on until 1998. Then the trade by the Americans was stopped. Miller declared after his arrest that the tobacco producer knew about the smuggling. RJReynolds denied it at first, but it could be proved the company agreed to pay a fine of millions of dollars. After the gang was rounded up the Canadian Government increased the taxes again. New smuggling gangs had already filled up the hole that Miller and his Mohawk Indians left.
This example from Canada is not the only one. So the authorities of Colombia brought charges against Philip Morris. According to the Colombian authorities, the smuggling plan was invented, designed and done by the highest management of Philip Morris to increase the sell and profit as much as possible. Colombia demanded a compensation of 20 billion guilders. According to the Colombian Government, cigarette smuggling is an important mean of laundering the profit of illegal sell of drugs.

European Union

Also closer at home the cigarette smuggle is increasing. The European Union has taken action too. At a court in New York also complaints have been put froward against Philip Morris and RJReynolds. The European Union suspects both producers of involvement of the smuggling, so billions of taxes are missed. An estimated ten to twenty percent of the cigarettes in Europe are illegally on the market. Researcher Luuk Joossens is trying by order of the World Bank and the WHO to get solid proof. In the report 'Curbing the Epidemic, governments and the economics of tobacco control' he and some fellow researchers put that the tobacco industry wants to put the governments under pressure to decrease taxes. As an example not only the situation in Canada is explained, but also how England has to do with this smuggling. British tobacco producers like Rothmans, Royal tobacco and BAT lately smuggled enormous amounts of cigarettes to the paradise of taxes, Andorra. In 1993 got the 60,000 inhabitants of Andorra 13 million of packets, in 1997 it was increased to 1,520 million packets.
Now the candidate EU-member State Cyprus is discovered by the organized crime as a handy export destination. Converted to the total inhabitants of the isle, every Cypriot has to smoke three packets of cigarettes a day from his birth to justify the amount of imported cigarettes.

Camorra

Now the war against smuggling cigarettes is high on the agenda of the European Union. Besides the juridical way that is done in New York now, several European customs have sharpened their surveillance. But especially in Italy this has little success. The Camorra from Naples controls especially the southeast coast of this county. A while ago two Italian custom officers died during a pursuit of the smugglers. The well-organized Camorra daily smuggles with fast speedboats millions of cigarettes from Montenegro to Italy into the European Union. By land it goes on via armored cars. It this area underground hiding places and transit sheds are discovered. The Italian police estimate that over 70,000 people in this region are busy smuggling.
International criminal investigation services like Interpol thinks that more and more drugs-smugglers switch over to smuggling cigarettes. 'There are two reasons for that,' according to a spokesman. 'First is that the law is not sufficiently adapted, so the punishments are relatively low. Second is that smuggling cigarettes is very lucrative. Every year the international organized crime earns many billions of dollars to this kind of smuggling. It is time that governments internationally use their power to stop this. We lose more and more ground.'
With a EU standard of minimal 57% tax on a packet of cigarettes, it seems wishful thinking. The incurable smoker keeps on smoking, and rather as cheap as possible. The advance of the smuggled cigarette seems unstoppable.

viz: "...the tribe won't let the U.S. government patrol its lands.

Rowena General, chief of staff for the Mohawks, said the tribe has no history of trust with the U.S. government. Many tribal elders recall decades past when, they argue, local and federal authorities would harass them and juries would convict them for crimes simply because they were Indians.

"Not by any means are we inviting federal agencies to come into our territory and police our communities," General said.""

http://www.why-war.com/news/2002/02/17/usreserv.html

US: Reservations Pose Border Risk
Laura Sullivan | Baltimore Sun | February 17, 2002
"As U.S. officials worried about terrorists tighten security at ports and borders, they have become concerned about the more than 20 American Indian reservations that line hundreds of miles of the borders with Canada and Mexico. Neither the U.S. Border Patrol nor any other state or federal agency has jurisdiction to patrol Indian lands without permission."

Potential U.S. Entry Through Indian Lands Raises Terror Alarms

TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, Ariz. — Here in the shadeless valleys of the Southwest, where the dust whips between patches of dry shrubs and cactuses, the line between Mexico and the United States is a tattered wire fence that pleases no one.

To the Tohono O'odham Indians, the fence is an arbitrary marker that bars them from moving freely across ancestral land that long ago extended into Mexico. To the U.S. government, the fence is symbolic of a glaring weakness in its war on terrorism.

As U.S. officials worried about terrorists tighten security at ports and borders, they have become concerned about the more than 20 American Indian reservations that line hundreds of miles of the borders with Canada and Mexico. Neither the U.S. Border Patrol nor any other state or federal agency has jurisdiction to patrol Indian lands without permission.

The lands are often desolate and remote. But in recent years, a rising number of smugglers and illegal immigrants have taken advantage of such reservations to travel, virtually unnoticed, into the United States. Here on the Tohono O'odham reservation, U.S. officials say, more than 1,000 cross into the country each day.

Law enforcement officials who had never given much thought to the Indian reservations on the borders are suddenly horrified by the idea that terrorists could sneak through these reservations and into the country with a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a snowmobile, or even just a backpack and bottle of water.

"I woke up one morning shortly after Sept. 11 and said to myself, 'I don't know how many of these tribes are on the border, but I know there are a lot,' " said James W. Ziglar, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "I knew we were going to have to increase border security" at the reservations.

Ziglar said he and other officials regard the Indian tribes not as a hindrance but as key allies in helping to seal the U.S. border against terrorists.

"This is a grand opportunity to reach out to Indian tribes, who have been segregated from our society, and integrate them into our society and really make them feel part of the American experience," Ziglar said, "because they have a very significant role in the protection of this country."

U.S. officials have launched a broad effort to try to forge closer ties with the tribes. Representatives of 19 reservations accepted invitations to a conference last month in Washington that focused on border security. Federal officials also have sent liaisons to talk with tribe members. In those meetings, officials have urged the tribes to lift curbs that limit patrols of Indian land by U.S. border agents.

So far, the path to collaboration has been anything but easy. Many American Indian groups have gone to these discussions with age-old stories of abuse and deceit at the hands of the U.S. government. To some, the idea of welcoming federal agents to roam their land at will is all but unthinkable.

Last month, Attorney General John Ashcroft told a meeting of American Indian leaders, "We must establish permanent formal relations" with Indian tribes "in order to secure the safety and security of all Americans."

But one tribal elder likened the process to trying to cross a river where there has never been a bridge.

The issue is sensitive for the Tohono O'odham, who also go by the name of Papago. In the early 1990s, when the number of illegal immigrants crossing the reservation began soaring, the Tohono O'odham opened their lands to more border agents. Tighter immigration policies had effectively shut down the borders near San Diego, Calif., and El Paso, Texas, so droves of illegal immigrants went looking for new entryways across the desert.

The Tohono O'odham's ancestral lands have been desecrated by the waves of people, who leave trash and trample vegetation. Their homes have been left vulnerable to break-ins by travelers so hungry and thirsty that dust cakes the crevices of their lips.

The reservation also has become a magnet for drug haulers. The Tohono O'odham Police Department seizes more drugs each year than any other local police department in the country. Last year, the department confiscated 43,000 pounds of marijuana from smugglers.

But although the Border Patrol has helped stymie some of the traffic, many Tohono O'odham complain of patrol agents who stop them three or four times a day, mistaking them for immigrants and demanding U.S. identification, which nation members do not have. Some also contend that the Border Patrol's vehicles do more damage than illegal immigrants do.

The tribe is divided about evenly between those willing to work with the Border Patrol and those who reject the notion that a government can impede people's movement across borders or any other land. Many Tohono O'odham members feed and offer water to the immigrants making the three-to four-day journey across the desert.

"The Border Patrol and the nation have come a long way," Henry Ramon, vice chairman of the nation, said recently. "We have tried to make them more aware of our cultural sensitivities, our sacred sites and our beliefs — that the plants, trees, the cactus, the wildlife and the universe are all interconnected. They cannot just come in and think this is their land."

From a hill overlooking one of the Tohono O'odhams' many desert valleys, police Chief Lawrence Seligman watches with night-vision goggles as streams of illegal immigrants wind around the dry shrubs and head toward state Route 86, where vans wait to carry them to jobs picking vegetables or washing dishes. Each year, more men, women and children try to cross.

"It's common knowledge in Mexico that this is the place to go," Seligman said. "In light of Sept. 11, if the concern is protecting the border, this part of the U.S. border has a lot of illegal traffic.

"Those who are a direct threat, if they chose to, could more easily cross here than many other areas to get into the country," he said.

Other Indian nations have been less willing to open their reservations. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which lines the border with Canada, has declined the government's request to patrol its land.

That reservation, called Akwesasne, is but a dot on the map in upstate New York. Yet over the past decade, a rising number of smugglers, carrying drugs and human cargo, have sought to enter the United States through the tribe's land and waterways to evade tighter patrols elsewhere.

In 1998, in the tribe's first attempt at working with federal law enforcement, officials broke up a smuggling ring that was bringing 150 Chinese into the country each month. Despite that success, the tribe won't let the U.S. government patrol its lands.

Rowena General, chief of staff for the Mohawks, said the tribe has no history of trust with the U.S. government. Many tribal elders recall decades past when, they argue, local and federal authorities would harass them and juries would convict them for crimes simply because they were Indians.

"Not by any means are we inviting federal agencies to come into our territory and police our communities," General said.

The tribe appreciates the U.S. government's new emphasis on guarding the border, General said, and suggests that federal agencies train the Mohawk Nation's police force so it could patrol the border — which some U.S. officials said they are willing to do.

Part of the difficulty in finding a solution to border security is that the 21 reservations on the country's borders — and four others that are within miles of a border — embody cultural experiences as disparate as the lands they inhabit.

"They are each individual entities," said Robert Harris, an associate chief of the U.S. Border Patrol who organized last month's conference. "There is no cookie-cutter approach.

"It's an area of vulnerability. You've got a million people streaming across the border each year unchecked," many coming across reservation lands, he said. "Yes, most are only coming across for a better way of life, but it only takes one [terrorist]."

Next to the Tohono O'odham reservation, at the Border Patrol station in Nogales, Ariz., agents said they see mostly Mexican nationals trying to cross. But, said Ben Johnson, a Border Patrol agent, over the past several years they have also caught people from Chile and Bolivia, as well as several from the Middle East.

Down in the desert, where the cactuses look like beacons calling people home, it's hard to imagine a band of terrorists ducking under the shrubbery and carrying gallon jugs of water, as illegal immigrants do each day.

Yet Ramon, the vice chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation, acknowledges that the threat exists. And so long as the federal government respects the tribe's way of life, he said, it will do what it can to aid the U.S. mission.

"The world is changing," he said. "We're scared, too."
www.sunspot.net/

"On the Warrior side, weapons are still stockpiled and ready
for use, and sentiments are running high."

http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9208/0025.html
One Nation Under The Gun: Inside The Mohawk Civil War
Steve Brock (sbrock@teal.csn.org)
Fri, 7 Aug 1992 19:18:41 GMT

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ONE NATION UNDER THE GUN: INSIDE THE MOHAWK CIVIL WAR by Rick
Hornung. Pantheon Books, 201 E. 50th St., N.Y., NY 10022. Index,
chronology, maps. 294 pp., $22.00 hardcover. 0-679-41265-4

REVIEW

What Hornung calls a "civil war" was the top blowing off of a
pressure cooker called the Akwasasne reserve, located on the
borders of Ontario, Quebec, and New York. The pressure began in
the early 1980s when a rift developed between tribal members over
how tribal elections were to be conducted, and whether or not the
tribe should begin, with the encouragement of the U.S. government,
gambling operations.
On one side, Hornung says, were those who favored democratic
elections with those elected negotiating with the U.S. and Canadian
governments for development money. They also wanted to develop
high-stakes bingo parlors and casinos. They called themselves the
Warriors.
On the other side were the traditionalists, who opposed white-
style elections. They believed that the negotiations had already
taken place when the Iroquois Confederacy was formed in the
seventeenth century. They believe in a government in accord with
the Confederacy's Constitution. Gambling, to them, is a corrup-
tion, with the tribe making profits from games of chance rather
than from work. Generally, the anti-gambling faction is located on
the Canadian side of the reservation.
Still a third group sprouted from factions of the two, which
absorbed some of the beliefs of each. Their primary activity was
smuggling.
The gambling controversy has resulted in violence between
tribal members. In May, 1990, two Mohawks were killed in an all-
night siege.
More pressure came from a proposal by the Canadian town of Oka
to extend a golf course onto land the Mohawks consider as sacred.
In July, 1990, a Quebec policeman was shot and killed in a dispute
over the site. Several roadblocks were set up by armed Warriors in
fatigues, and sympathetic tribes followed suit as far away as
British Columbia.
The initial distribution of the book in Canada was temporarily
blocked by two female activists who alleged that they had been
misquoted.
Hornung, a staff writer for the Village Voice, makes no bones
about where his sentiments lie, and these are readily expressed as
he chronicles the Mohawk events, "reporting on the fly, running
between interviews, shootouts, car rammings, standoffs, troop
deployments and press conferences." He feels that the tribe should
be able to attempt self-sufficiency (gambling) instead of being
oppressed by the governmental dole.
For sixteen months, the Mohawk tribe was caught up in the
formation of blockades (by men wearing fatigues and carrying
automatic weapons), beatings, and drive-by shootings. Hornung
describes each event as if writing a long newspaper article, then
interviews those involved on each side.
Hornung depicts the culminating surrender of those holed up in
a treatment center as a large-scale waterfight, with soldiers
spraying tribal members with a firehose while they retaliated with
water-filled condoms.
After the final surrender, on September 26, 1990, the standoff
continues, but now it is below the surface. The Mohawk casinos are
being built while their operators await approval from the state
government. The State of New York has opposed the introduction of
slot machines, stating that they are illegal under state law. The case is in federal court.
On the Warrior side, weapons are still stockpiled and ready
for use, and sentiments are running high. Hornung, sometime in the
future, may sit down to write "The Mohawk Civil War II."

inquest wrote:
There's been quite a lot of misunderstanding as to the supremacy clause. It has no effect on the applicability of any of the other provisions of the Constitution.

______________________________________

THE SUPREMACY CLAUSE
Article. VI.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

______________________________________

The supremacy clause causes the US Constitution to be binding on the State Governments.
The States are restricted by the BOR because the supremacy clause binds the judges in every state to follow what's in the Constitution.
--- The BOR's and all Amendments are intergal parts of the Constitution... They therefore became restrictive on the States.
The 9th & 10th are clear.
The Ninth says that the peoples unemumerated rights cannot be denied or violated.
Thus the 10ths powers, both Federal, -- and those reserved to the States, -- cannot be used to violate the enumerated or unenumerated rights of the people.
-- A simple concept our 'states rights' contingent just can't accept.
Why is that?
208 tpaine

______________________________________

Yet you've acknowledged that there are clauses that apply only to the feds despite no explicit language to that effect.

Get back to me when you've figured out how to reconcile those two positions.
211 inquest

______________________________________

The 10th Amendment says, in explicit language, that there are powers delegated to the US government, and those that are prohibited to the States.

No 'reconciliation' is needed of that clear position.

Thus the 10ths powers, both Federal, -- and those reserved to the States, -- cannot be used to violate the enumerated or unenumerated rights of the people.

Get back to me when you work up a valid counterpoint, inquest.
212

______________________________________

You only claimed that it wasn't "necessary" to answer it. I'll let the reader decide if that's true.
-inquest-

______________________________________

Yep, the reader can easily decide the truth, -- from the above exchange, -- that you've lost it once again.

The clear words of our Constitution are irrefutable, inquest. -- Which always leaves the question; -- why do you try?

What is your 'game'?

"Why, I thought a big supporter of States Rights and Limited Government would be pleased with Justice Clarence Thomas over this."

I am. I just find this statement coming from a member of the judiciary to be laughable.

"Do you have an example of Justice Thomas' approval of forcing States to fund judicial activism?"

The USSC approved it.

"In Kansas City, Missouri a federal court judge not only mandated spending but raised taxes on his own authority. In a truly abominable decision a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court upheld this edict that spent over $1.5 billion on the Kansas City public school district."

"The best examples in this regard are St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, who have received well over $2 billion from the State Treasury to implement the most expensive school desegregation plans in the country. In these two cases, the federal courts have profoundly altered the normal school financing process and have created unrealistic and unsustainable levels of funding (example: their pupil-teacher ratios are among the lowest in the country at about 13 to 1). Given this unprecedented amount of state funding, it is understandable why these two school boards will not voluntarily give up their state revenues. But it is also understandable why the voters and taxpayers in Missouri have repeatedly elected state officials committed to ending the court orders. Fortunately, the State is a defendant in these two cases and can (and has) filed for unitary status."

Who's placing mandates on the states? Unelected and unaccountable members of the judiciary, that's who.

"In 1982, the Supreme Court rules in Plyler v. Doe , 457 U.S. 202 (1982), that public schools were prohibited from denying immigrant students access to a public education. The Court stated that undocumented children have the same right to a free public education as U.S. citizens and permanent residents."

"Educating illegal immigrants in public schools costs states at least $7.4 billion annually, according to a study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform that argues American children are being hurt by the drain on resources."

Just two off the top of my head.

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