MaggieMae
Reality bits
- Apr 3, 2009
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if the Constitution is to be abided solely on its word, then why was it also a requirement therein that a United States Supreme Court would be tasked to rule on all of its stated provisions as required? Do you honestly think the framers were stupid enough to believe that time would stand still and that events would take place necessitating broader definitions?
It was understood, quite logically, that from time to time, matters between the states would arise where appeals on the meanings of law an its repercussions would need to be discussed, defined and clarified. Alexander Hamilton viewed the Supreme Court as the weakest branch. None of the founding fathers could have ever dreamed that one day we would have 9 black robed tyrannts who would usurp the power of the legislature and use the power of the judiciary to write law from whole cloth, discover heretofore unknown 'rights' in the constitution and twist or degenerate the meanings of minute clauses like the Interstate Commerce Clause and the General Welfare clause to include anything and everything at any time for the sake of a NATIONAL government, not a strictly defined and enumerated federal government tasked with ONLY law between the states, nations and other foreign powers.
The constitution was made flexible so it could, over the course of time, be amended to cover situations and advances in society that they could not have conceived at the time. They did not, however, believe that a day would come where society would be so morally bankrupt that the very meanings of the words would be twisted to achieve tyranny over free men. James Madison himself vetoed the first charitable spending bill and sent a veto with an admonishment back to congress reminding them that it is not the place of government to be caretakers for the people regardless of their need, but to defend their rights to be free and help themselves and others as they saw fit.
That bit, along with the clarifications in the Sixteen Amendment, allows a tax to be levied on income.
A tax is not a good or service to be purchased by compulsion. Therefore, no power to do this.
It seems we have a law student. Would this be the 1944 case with the activist packed FDR supreme court? Technically (in a sane world), since insurance now can't be sold across state lines, this would no longer be interstate commerce and therefore free of federal regulation. But since the activist court abused the Interstate Commerce Clause to push through New Deal radicalism, the ruling stood. I found this little tidbit on the courts between 1930 and 1953 kind of interesting...
During the Hughes, Stone, and Vinson Courts (19301953), the court gained its own accommodation in 1935[24] and changed its interpretation of the Constitution in order to facilitate Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal (West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish,[25] Wickard v. Filburn),[26] giving a broader reading to the powers of the Federal Government.[27]
I knew that the supreme court was deliberately packed with progressive judicial activists by FDR because he wanted to push through previously unconstitutional legislation. Once the jurists were in place, all they had to do was modify the definitions of terminology and the rest was a fait accompli. Much like the left's beloved president asking... what the definition of 'is' is? So you may correctly point out that the national government gained the right to regulate insurance legally... it did so by deceit and trickery making it, at best, a good example of illegitimate law that will stand till a court arrives with the intestinal fortitude to purge such rulings as this.
Legal does not make right... only legal.
In McCulloch, the Court discusses at length the appropriate usage of the necessary and proper clause, concluding that powers necessary for carrying out powers explicitly granted to Congress (in our case, regulating insurance under the Commerce Clause as sanctioned in South-eastern Underwriters) may be exercised by Congress when not expressly forbidden in the Constitution. In this instance, we loop back up to the first point, since the power being exercised is one of taxation. The circle is complete.
Ah yes. The "good n' plenty" rears it's ugly head. So the necessary and proper clause takes precedent over the enumerated powers doctrine? Sounds to me, like Jim Crow, bad law was made in the Supreme Court out of whole cloth again. Yes, they are equivalent. Both enslaved people to artificial and unconstitutional constructs. Till you can show why the necessary and proper clause has supremacy over enumerated powers...
...your circle is shattered.
How interesting that you agree with the flexibility of the Constitution in the first part of your response(s), then try to blame any of the USSC decisions you might happen to dislike as exclusively the fault of liberal activists on the court. The only thing that I see coming full circle here is the simple fact that you are a politial hack who will refuse to take even a middle of the road rationale if it has a whisper of damaging your political stand.