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To: Publius Valerius
First off, I think incorporation is bogus--I don't buy that the 14th Amendment "incorporates" the Bill of Rights--it's not in the legislative history and it simply wasn't the purpose to the amendment.

Wrong.

On May 23, 1866, Senator Howard of Michigan introduced the proposal in the Senate. In a 1994 Duke Law Journal article, William Van Alstyne and his associates wrote the following concerning Senator Howard's remarks:
So, in reporting the Fourteenth Amendment to the Senate on behalf of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in 1866, Senator Jacob Meritt Howard of Michigan began by detailing the 'first section' of that amendment, i.e., the section that 'relates the privileges and immunities of citizens.' He explained that the first clause of the amendment (the 'first section'), once approved and ratified, would 'restrain the power of the States' even as Congress was already restrained (by the Bill of Rights) from abridging -- the personal rights quarantined and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as freedom of speech and of the press; the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for redress of grievances, a right appertaining to each and all the people; the right to keep and bear arms... [etc., through the Eighth Amendment].
Senator Howard referred to the right enumerated in the Second Amendment as a personal right of the people, not a collective right of the States. He concluded his remarks by stating:
[T]here is no power given in the Constitution to enforce and to carry out any of these guarantees. They are not powers granted by the Constitution to Congress... they stand simply as a bill of rights in the Constitution, without power on the part of Congress give them full effect; while at the same time the States are not restrained from violating the principles embraced in them.... The great object of this first section of this amendment is, therefore, to restrain the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees.

310 posted on 04/24/2006 6:18:11 AM PDT by steve-b (A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
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To: steve-b; robertpaulsen; Everybody
Great quote.

Not that he will bother to read it, -- but you forgot to ping paulsen, FR's foremost advocate of a States 'right' to prohibit any type of property .
319 posted on 04/24/2006 6:54:38 AM PDT by tpaine
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