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To: outlawcam
It is a waste of my time to attempt to communicate with someone who is so ignorant that he refuses to acknowledge the possibility that he is ignorant and is unwilling to read or try to learn anything. I have shown constitutional experts who agree with my position. You are unwilling to even attempt to find someone who supports your warped interpretations, either because you know you are wrong or you prefer to live in a fantasy world removed form reality.
186 posted on 04/23/2002 2:48:17 PM PDT by Free the USA
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To: Free the USA
So you're saying that states could, if they desired, try someone as many times as they wish for the same crime, or is that prohibited by the fifth amendment? The fourteenth doesn't mention double jeopardy or the right for men to be free from being compelled to incriminate himself.

Before you speak, I know what you're going to say.... something about "incorporation," which no court prior to 1947 had recognized, but suddenly found hidden in the fourteenth. In Waltz v. Tax Commission (1970), the justices even admitted that Everson v. Board of Education invented the incorporation clause out of whole cloth. Although it was speaking specifically to the Establishment clause, the ruling (Waltz v. Tax Commission) had a similar meaning for all the other amendments. It said, The Establishment Clause was not incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment until Everson v. Board of Education was decided in 1947... The meaning of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause [has been] made applicable to the States for only a few decades at best. (emphasis mine)

The fifth didn't need to be incorporated, because it promised protection for all people, regardless of the antagonist. Chief Justice John Marshall disagreed, and said so in the 1833 decision of Barron v. Baltimore, that the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government. One thing I find quite interesting about that is that there wouldn't have been a need to make such a decision unless there had been a conflict in the first place, and thus serves as proof to my point that it hadn't been "considered," but legislated by the high court. Here is the linked article's conclusion:

Barron was wrongly decided, and needs to be overturned. Federal courts should not accept jurisdiction of state civil rights cases unless or until all recourse within the state courts has been exhausted, but it should accept jurisdiction over appropriate cases involving any of the rights recognized in the Bill of Rights after that has occurred, and extend all of those protections to cases between a citizen and his state. Especially important are the protections of the Second Amendment, the right to a grand jury of the Fifth, and the right not to have state officials or their agents exercise undelegated powers. (emphasis added)

Also, do not forget the Blaine amendment, submitted during the framing of the fourteenth amendment, which of all things, made an attempt to apply the first amendment to the states. It, as well as five similar amendments, were voted down. If the framers didn't intend for the fourteenth to apply the first amendment to the states, why do you think that similar proposals weren't made to incorporate the fifth, if your claim is true? Could it be that the framers thought the fifth amendment already applied to the states? There were certainly those who did, in spite of John Marshall's assertion. Here's another interesting tidbit of the above linked article regarding incorporation:

What is interesting about this, however, has been that the Supreme Court has not extended the protection of all the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, but has followed a doctrine of "selective incorporation", enforcing all or parts of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments, but not the Second, Third, Seventh, Ninth, or Tenth Amendments, or part of the Fifth. The inconsistency of this selection is grammatically indefensible, and is a continuing source of constitutional difficulty.

I could go on, but why bother? You've already demonstrated a willingness to comment on my competence without having the slightest knowledge as to what research I may or may not have done, thereby reducing your arguments to ad hominem attacks. In addition, your inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the grammatically correct reading of the Bill of Rights leads me to doubt we could produce any good fruit through this debate.

Good luck and happy research.

189 posted on 04/23/2002 6:01:43 PM PDT by outlawcam
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