I like the idea of placing this protection on an express and absolutely solid constitutional footing. I think McClintock is ginning up the machinery in California to do just that. I hope he succeeds.
As a practical matter, it would seem that state constitutional amendments can be more easily and quickly implemented than a federal constitutional amendment. But I'd support the latter too.
Yeah, Right! Let's trust the legislative bodies, that are comprised mostly of MEMBERS OF THE LEGAL INDUSTRY!
Have you noticed how few to NO community, or more importantly, national leaders, Republican/Democrat, liberal/conservative have come to the defense or condemnation of the Supreme Court's erosion of our 5th Amendment rights last week?
Thomas Jefferson had THIS to say --
"To consider the judges (the legal industry) as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges (the legal industry) are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."
—Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
Then --
"In denying the right [the Supreme Court usurps] of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than [others] do, if I understand rightly [this] quotation from the Federalist of an opinion that 'the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.' If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [act of suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, coordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow . . . The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
—Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212
Catch that last line again: "The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
As I've been saying for so long, "It's the legal industry, stupid." They've been playing us against each other while they've quietly been taking control.
Regrettably, it appears that except for local and national "conservative" talk-show hosts, the nation has been lulled back to sleep.
Nevertheless, we've still got our flag upside down for the fourth. Take care, all!
HDRabon