Mark your calendars: It's Constitution Day!

Don't forget our own FReeper, Constitution Day.

It's his birthday.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

My boys (10 yr old twins) have a half day off from school for “Constitution Day” and we are spending 2 hours of the break this afternoon discussing the aforementioned document.

Mine calls Sept 17 citizenship day.
later this month on the 29 Rosh Hashanah bedgins and is clearly marked on my calendar.

Thank you sir!

It’s also the anniversary of the Battle of Sharpsburg in 1862.

I wonder if our favorite affirmative action Constitutional Law “professor” even knows what day it is.

Thanks for reminding me. I should be able to remember this as it’s my son’s birthday too.

I checked both of my calendars. They are the same. I’m calling the publishers to complain.

Possibly the greatest document written since Shakespeare put his pen to paper, it still amazes me the lack of knowledge our own reps, senators and supremes have about it. Yet they have sworn an oath to us to uphold and defend it.

The Constitution may be imperfect, but then it isn’t meant to create a perfect country. The founders knew that and did their best within man’s inherent frailties to frame a government that was to be contained within very limited and defined constraints.

The States were to have the many powers concerning their respective citizens, not a central government.

In my opinion every one should take a course to further their understanding of this, including our reps. Or better yet, just get a copy and read it, read it and read it again. It is easier to understand than some Shakespeare!

Happy Birthday U.S Constitution, may the people of the U.S. never forget where the real power of this government lies, with WE THE PEOPLE!

“Study the Constitution. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislatures, and enforced in courts of justice.” — Abraham Lincoln

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson: “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the “Articles of Confederation,” and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.”

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow.” — James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788

“If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?” — South Carolina Senator William Draden 1828

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” —Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817

“the true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best . . . (for) when all government . . . shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as . . . oppressive as the government from which we separated.” —Thomas Jefferson

“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition.” — Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1791

“A wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
— Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

“Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” — Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 17:380

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 2:221

[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.
— James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 6, 1788, Elliot’s Debates (in the American Memory collection of the Library of Congress)

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
— James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1794

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
— Benjamin Franklin

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

In a famous incident in 1854, President Franklin Pierce was pilloried for vetoing an extremely popular bill intended to help mentally ill. The act was championed by the renowned 19th century social reformer Dorothea Dix. In the face of heavy criticism, Pierce countered: “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for the public charity.” To approve such spending, argued Pierce, “would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.”
— President Grover Cleveland vetoing a bill for charity relief (18 Congressional Record 1875 [1877]

In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
— James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

My favorite phrase in teh Constitution is “Congress shall mak no law...”

My favorite phrase in teh Constitution is “Congress shall make no law...”

I’d say happy Constitution Day but I am too deeply saddened by what we’re doing to that venerable document.

Dude! It’s your day!

Wow, Cyber. It’s been a while!

I know, dude, it IS my day. And my day has rocked. ROCKED, I tell you!

Hope you and your lovely other half are doing great!

CD