Posted on 03/03/2013 10:24:06 AM PST by netguide
If you can't do the work, you won't really know where our liberties come from. They come from the Founders' applied philosophy of letting people alone. That included (at the time) letting local governments solve minor problems. Which flag-burning is. Your emotional reactions don't correspond to the way this issue developed in history.
You can come out in favor of gun rights and the First Amendment, which I'm glad you do. (Didn't see you comment on abortion.) But until you do the work of reading at least a bit of the history of where our laws came from, you won't understand what actually happens when government says it wants to do this or that. If all you rest on is your feelings about the way things ought to be, the effect is that you know nothing.
Ahhh I guarantee you I've read more history last year then most people have in a lifetime.
I read on average 4 books a week most of them history. You cite cases as proof that the Bill of rights can be invalidated by local authority. When in fact the supreme court has ruled exactly opposite. In 1989 Texas vs. Johnson the court stated "again" that physical actions such as flag burning are considered an act of Free Speech and thus protected by the First Amendment and such laws stating otherwise are invalid.
Yet amazingly you forgot to cite this case. Is it because you were ignorant of it or because it blows a hole in your entire argument?
No matter how you try and wiggle around with your verbal acrobatics the bottom line is State Law nor Town Ordinances can over ride the Bill of Rights.
Its the law of the land.
can =can’t
Now we're getting somewhere. Notice the date: 1989. That was after the postwar Supreme Court power-grab I mentioned (Everson, 1947). Everson was the first time the USSC arrogated to itself the right to overrule had always been considered state matters by claiming that the First Amendment gave them that right. It was a brand-new maneuver for the USSC. Nothing in the Constitution gives them the right to make new state law. Not surprisingly, they'd ruled that they didn't have that right in 1905, in Lochner.
Now, you or I might agree with this or that decision the Court made after that on a Free Speech issue, but it was a violation of states' rights, and because of that, a lot of evil followed. The US Constitution is an agreement among the States, which is why each state has its own state constitution, complete with a First Amendment. After 1947 came a whole host of decisions many conservatives consider wrongly decided and none of the Court's business: the obscenity cases of the 1960s, Miranda, Roe vs Wade, countless decisions creating "special" groups' rights to other people's stuff, Lawrence vs. Texas, which declared invalid a Texas law against sodomy, ObamaCare, and lots more to come, possibly including homosexual marriage, and all unconstitutional.
You're attached to the idea of the USC granting First Amendment rights out in the sticks. I don't like local busybodies either. The only thing worse is . . . Federal busybodies, who don't have to worry about me voting against them or keying their cars. How do we like the Federalization of absolutely everything—what gas you can put in your car, what light-bulbs you can buy, what gun you can own, what shed you can build near your stream, and what toilet you can flush? How's that working out for you? The only way I can move away from it is to leave the country. The Founders never designed it this way, because they knew that subsidiarity—handling things at the lowest level possible—would yield imperfect results, but better results than the rule of minutia from above which is tyranny. We can thank Wilson and Roosevelt for Michelle Obama's fat-butt lectures on what your kids should eat for lunch.
The First Amendment is the law of the land because it's in the US Constitution. Not because the Supreme Court says so. Their job is to apply, not invent. Nowhere in the USC does it say the USSC is the final arbiter of what's Constitutional. Marshall claimed that right, but he had a dog in that fight. The branches are co-equal, and they jostle each other all the time. Obama is trying to take power from both Congress and the Court. The Founders wrote the USC in plain English for a reason: It's up to us, by design, to smack our government in line—local, state, or Federal.
Sorry its not gonna work. You claimed that the States AND the Towns/Cities have the right to over ride the Bill of Rights with a stroke of the pen.
They don't. the SCOTUS rules on the Constitutionality of laws. Its their job. They deemed your stance is wrong and anyone with a high school civics class under their belt can read the 10th and know the SCOTUS is right in ruling so.
You are wrong. States Rights do not trump the Bill of Rights. It cannot be clearer and no amount of blather and misdirection on your part will change the fact you were and are wrong!
"Nowhere in the USC does it say the USSC is the final arbiter of what's Constitutional. "
Actually it says that very thing:
Article III Section 1. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. Such gives the judicial power to the Federal Supreme Court and its lower courts.
Section 2. "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
Translation: Federal Supreme Court and its lower courts can rule on any case that has a bearing on the Constitution they see fit to grant cert to.
Which once again proves you wrong.
Section 2. "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
The powers all concern controversies between the Federal government and other entities, controversies between citizens of different states, or between citizens with land claims that involve other state governments. Nowhere does it simply say "in all matters arising between citizens of the same state," or anything to that effect. And remember our Constitution grants powers to the Federal government that are "few and defined." No extras, no assumptions, no penumbras, no gimmes.
All of the post-1947 decisions I cited concerned matters between citizens of the same state. That's what made those decisions without precedent in the first 160 years of the Constitution's existence. The Court didn't go there because the USC doesn't empower them to, and the other branches were watching. I am not the first to point this out, by any means.
Read more carefully. Read Mark Levin or somebody. You don't understand the difference between Federal government and the sovereign states that created it, and what has changed in their relationship since the Progressives were unleashed in the 20th century. But take heart, you're never too old to learn.
Best regards, over and out.
Ahhh NO, those are in addition to the matters concerning the Constitution.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States...
Not "some" cases but instead "ALL" cases arising under the Constitution.
Which again shows you you are wrong.
The qualifiers listed further down in the list are in addition to that statement. The reason being is a State court would have a biased interest determining a case that was between that State and a citizen of another State. And in other examples from the rest of the qualifiers plainly the States would have no right to speak for the USA when dealing with people of a foreign state.
But you keep trying Sparky you may actually get one right by accident once. (but I seriously doubt it.)
You should never sign a contract without a lawyer reading it for you. There's nothing else to say.
Article 3 Section 2: "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution..."
As plain as you can get. Not "some" but "all" cases in law and equity under this Constitution.
And thus by you own admission "QED"...
Or as the kids say, game... set... match.
Thanks for playing Sparky.
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