TemplarKormac
Political Atheist
- Thread starter
- #61
The constitution and it's case law are inseparable, The constitution is the skeleton and case law is the flesh. The founders knew that if they did not make the document flexible and amendable it would fail. Don't know where you guys get this idea that it was meant to be rigid and is adequate on it's own.Unless you are prepared to apply it fairly and equally to anyone who is a citizen in America, while obeying it completely and fully yourself; or if you know nothing about it, or of the rights it grants you. Stop invoking it if you plan on twisting its precepts to fit your agenda. Don't invoke the Constitution unless you're ready to exercise it.
Carry on.
Are you talking about the Constitution as written or the one bastardized by the courts and politicians? They're not the same you know.
That's what all the folks that have bastardized the document say. General welfare was never intended to be a general power of the feds, expenditures are limited by Section 8 just like defense spending.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Check this out:
“Although that Preamble indicates the general purposes for which the people ordained and established the Constitution, it has never been regarded as the source of any substantive power conferred on the Government of the United States or on any of its Departments.”
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)
"A power to lay taxes for any purposes whatsoever is a general power; a power to lay taxes for certain specified purposes is a limited power. A power to lay taxes for the common defense and general welfare of the United States is not in common sense a general power. It is limited to those objects. It cannot constitutionally transcend them."
-Judge Joseph Story, 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.
‘[T]he laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They [Congress] are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts
or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose.’’ The clause, in short, is not an independent grant of power, but a qualification of the taxing power."
Killian, Johnny; George Costello; Kenneth Thomas (2004). The Constitution of the United States of America—Analysis and Interpretation
Looks like OKTexas nailed you, Bfgrn.
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