Free Republic

When John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country," we heard his words with ears that had been conditioned to receive this message and hearts that did not resist it. We heard it surrounded by fellow citizens who had known lives of sacrifice and hardships from war, the Great Depression and segregation. All around us seemed to ingest and echo his sentiment and his words. Our country and our principles were more important than our individual wants, and by discharging our responsibilities...

I’d like to take a moment to say that I disagree with you… Not on everything, mind you but on something nonetheless. I figure you probably see things differently than me also. It’s how we’re made. Although we aren’t the sum of all that we are taught and our upbringing, it does play into our beliefs. We are higher than the animals in that we were made in God’s image giving us the distinct ability to make judgments based on reasoning. Sometimes this works for us, but more often than not in our fallen state, it fights against us. But...

This morning I heard that one of the other candidates commented that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document.” Frankly, I assumed this came from Senator Clinton or Senator Obama. It is identical to what Al Gore said when he was running for President in 2000, when he said he would look for judges “who understand that our Constitution is a living, breathing document, that it was intended by our founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people.” Imagine my surprise when I learned that this statement actually came from my opponent,...

The comment came during an interview with CNN this morning. I’m not going to rant about this. I will point out that Huckabee’s position doesn’t square up well with the Constitution’s amendment process — a process laid out precisely because it ought to be difficult to change the Constitution, but change is sometimes necessary, and it’s necessary because the Constitution isn’t a living, breathing document. If it were, as the proponents of that understanding tend to believe, you can find meanings in the penumbras of what’s actually written, meanings that might in fact be at odds with the plain understanding...

From The Center for Constitutional Studies Democratizing the Constitution: The Failure of the Seventeenth AmendmentC. H. Hoebeke*[From HUMANITAS, Volume IX, No. 2, 1996 © National Humanities Institute, Washington, DC USA] It was with no small sense of vindication that Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan signed the proclamation of 31 May 1913, declaring the Seventeenth Amendment duly ratified and incorporated into the fundamental laws of the United States. More than twenty years earlier as a Nebraska congressman, "The Great Commoner" had joined the struggle to free the Senate from the control of corrupt state legislatures, and despite three failed campaigns for...

Senator John McCain’s recent comments about America’s heritage as a “Christian nation” ignited an ill-tempered blast of self-righteous condemnation – a reaction that highlighted the widespread misunderstandings, distortions and downright ignorance surrounding the nation’s founders and their view of religion’s role in society. Asked a question about a recent poll that showed 55% of the public believing that “the Constitution establishes a Christian nation,” McCain responded: “I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp...

Friday, August 17, 2007 Nix That [Kathryn Jean Lopez] From Team Thompson: I'm afraid CNN story you linked mischaracterized Thompson's comment on gay marriage. They've since altered the story....without noting the change. For the record, the Thompson camp has officially noted that "Fred Thompson does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage." He supports the rights of States to choose their marriage law for themselves. The Thompson camp issued this statement: In an interview with CNN today, former Senator Fred Thompson’s position on constitutional amendments concerning gay marriage was unclear. Thompson believes that states should be able to...

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. made it clear as he began taking questions at yesterday's National Italian American Foundation luncheon that he couldn't reveal any of the Supreme Court's forthcoming opinions. But did he at least give a hint? Two of the court's biggest remaining cases focus on the First Amendment, and while Alito didn't mention either, he did make it clear that any restrictions on speech face a high hurdle with him. "I'm a very strong believer in the First Amendment and the right of people to speak and to write," Alito said in response to a question of...

The next U.S. president could reshape the Supreme Court, where the two oldest members are liberals and volatile decisions like abortion now hinge on a single swing vote. The possible sea change has already surfaced 18 months before the November 2008 election and could develop into a major campaign issue for Democrats who want to move the court to the left and Republicans who hope to plant it firmly in the conservative camp. The U.S. high court is now evenly split between conservative and liberal justices, who have been divided by 5-4 votes on abortion rights, the death penalty and...

Nothing in the U.S. Constitution authorizes the federal government to regulate private property. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution authorizes the federal government to manage wildlife or prescribe land-use regulations within the various states. By what authority, then, has the federal government constructed the expansive bureaucracy that now forces wolves, panthers and bears on states and communities that don't want them, or levied fines, and jailed people who dare dig a ditch or dump a load of sand on their own private property? This federal power arises from the treaty clause (Article VI (2)) of the U.S. Constitution. Alabama attorney Larry...

The living Constitution, which has performed innumerable feats of jurisprudential prestidigitation, has accomplished a miraculous new trick during the national debate over NSA surveillance. It faked its own death.To do this, it needed the help of its numerous magicians' assistants in the Democratic party (with some audience participation by Republicans, too). If you recall, the "living Constitution" is the notion that the meaning of the Constitution changes over time. One day nine justices simply wake up, and when they arrive at work that day, they discover that the words in the document they studied their entire adult lives suddenly mean...

Per Fox News...

Lawmakers and special interest groups started positioning themselves for President Bush's next pick for U.S. Supreme Court justice the same day a fumbled nomination ended in Harriet Miers (search) withdrawing from the confirmation process. Miers, who will remain as White House counsel, made a surprise announcement Thursday morning that she is withdrawing her name from consideration to replace Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (search), who announced over the summer that she wanted to retire from the bench. O'Connor agreed to stay on while her replacement was vetted through the confirmation process. In her withdrawal letter dated Thursday, Miers...

Here is the text of Harriet Miers' remarks at the White House after President Bush's announcement that he has nominated her for the Supreme Court: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much. I am very grateful for the confidence in me that you've shown by this nomination and certainly I am humbled by it. From my early days as a clerk in the federal district court and throughout almost three decades of legal practice, bar service and community service, I have always had a great respect and admiration for the genius that inspired our Constitution and our system of...

Freeper Investigation: Original Intent and Constitutional Jurisprudence by Jean F. Drew English and Anglo-American law’s core principle is the opposition to abusive power as exercised by the state. As Dan Gifford writes in “The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason,” “The law is not the law regardless if it be good, bad, or indifferent. There is a higher moral law, originating within ancient Jewish law, which requires individual responsibility for opposing evil and promoting goodness. It is from this basic tenet that English law and Anglo-American law embody the following principle: The individual has rights against the...

  Section 3. Treason   Clause 1. Definition and Limitations   Treason The treason clause is a product of the awareness of the Framers of the ''numerous and dangerous excrescences'' which had disfigured the English law of treason and was therefore intended to put it beyond the power of Congress to ''extend the crime and punishment of treason.'' 1283 The debate in the Convention, remarks in the ratifying conventions, and contemporaneous public comment make clear that a restrictive concept of the crime was imposed and that ordinary partisan divisions within political society were not to be escalated by the stronger...

Foreign Law and the U.S. Constitution By Kenneth Anderson Kenneth Anderson is professor of law at the Washington College of Law, American University, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Email: kanders@wcl.american.edu. Website: http://kennethandersonlawofwar.blogspot.com. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Roper v. Simmons,1 which endorsed the use of foreign and international law in U.S. constitutional adjudication, has at least the virtue of putting everyone’s cards on the table. Until that decision was handed down (on March 1, 2005), it remained possible to view the appearance of foreign law in constitutional decisions as nothing more than a minor...

Issues & Insights Wednesday, May 4, 2005 Profile Of An Extremist INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Washington: Ever wonder just what it is about Janice Rogers Brown that prompted the Democrats to so fiercely oppose her nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals? It's her radical position on the Constitution. Or rather, it's her dedication to constitutional limits that has enraged the left. They don't want anyone on the bench who might get in the way of federal policies and programs that can't withstand constitutional scrutiny. Brown, the African-American daughter of an Alabama sharecropper, happens to believe the Supreme Court's protection of...

Amendment XXVII [Compensation of Members of Congress (1992)]

About 15 years ago I wrote a book about crime, tackling the knotty problem of how "technicalities" based on the Bill of Rights could end up excusing people of ancient crimes like robbery and murder. The problem, I found, was the tendency of judges and lawyers to elevate the Constitution to Holy Writ. Murder, rape, and other crimes, you see, are only statutory offenses. There's nothing in the Constitution that says you can't kill someone. On the other hand, if a murderer argues that he wasn't read his Miranda warnings three times in the language of his choice, he is...

When he ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the Supreme Court building in Alabama, federal judge Myron Thompson stated that the issue at stake involved the question of whether or not the state has the right to acknowledge God. Actually, this formulation is a distraction from the real issue, which is whether or not Myron Thompson or any other federal judge has the right to interfere with state actions that may or may not constitute an establishment of religion. Someone who simply reads the text of the Constitution of the United States would be thoroughly surprised to...

2. ORIGINAL INTENT: THE FRAMERS DID NOT INTEND THE SUPREME COURT TO BE THE ULTIMATE ARBITER OF ALL CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES. The doctrine of original intent holds that the legislature--not the judiciary--is the "predominant" branch5; that the judiciary was the "weakest" of the three branches of government.6 To the Founders, the opinion that the Supreme Court was the ultimate arbiter of all constitutional issues was "never proper,"7 and a "dangerous doctrine"8 which would lead to the judiciary becoming a "despotic branch."9 They were concerned that the federal judiciary would usurp all the powers from the States.10 This was the system of...

Questions for judicial nominees Posted: February 28, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Two weeks ago, President Bush re-nominated 12 candidates for federal appeals court seats whose confirmations were blocked by Senate Democrats during his first term. Bush says judicial nominees deserve an up-or-down vote in the Senate. That's the way the Founding Fathers intended for the Senate to be heard on judicial nominees. Instead, Bush's political opposition, too weak to prevent most nominees from approval, has prevented the nominees from coming up for a vote. While I support some of Bush's judicial nominees, I oppose others. The effect...

America was not founded on the concept of a "wall of separation between church and state," it was founded upon pluralism. The "wall of separation" phrase does not appear in any of our founding documents; it is taken from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson. To base our laws on the correspondence of Jefferson, rather than the Constitution ratified by representatives of each of the original " united states ," is in direct opposition to our system of representative government. Jefferson was a brilliant man, but he also favored slavery and was fanatical about macaroni and cheese. However, slavery was...

In some locales, school children are told by their teachers that they must not mention God if they speak in class listing those things for which they are thankful. Elsewhere, the ACLU and other groups continue their battle to expunge all trace of religion from the public sphere. As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, it is worthwhile reading President George Washington’s original Thanksgiving Proclamation, from the year 1789. Once Thomas Jefferson became President, he discontinued the practice, deeming it too "kingly." But in 1863, the author of "Mary Had A Little Lamb", Sarah Josepha Hale, suggested President Lincoln resume the...

This flyer would be a good one to pass out to conservative Christians that might not be inclined to vote, either from apathy or overconfidence. This could be distributed in church parking lots on Wednesday nights (you should probably get permission). We will adding a web page for this flyer shortly. Any Suggestions? Anybody have any stories to tell about your experience passing our our flyers? Supreme Court

Our Embattled Constitution Harry V. Jaffa Professor Emeritus of Government, Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Harry V. Jaffa is professor emeritus of government at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School and a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1939 and holds a Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research. He is the author of numerous books on political philosophy and American politics, including Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates; Equality and Liberty; The Conditions of Freedom; American Conservatism and the American Founding; and,...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

The conversation was getting kind of deep a few days back when some wag wondered out loud what the daughter would be like had Joseph Stalin and Marie Antoinette married and together raised the child. According to one woman, there is a U.S. Senator with the mean attitude of a Stalin, yet who also demands the shameful personal excesses of an Antoinette. At first thought, these extrapolations sound silly, of course -- like a cartoon painted in word pictures. Funny, yes. But still silly. Because, the original topic of the conversation was about Hillary admonishing her seniors at the Democratic...

Quite a number of us have been following the U.S. v. Emerson case pertaining to the Second Amendment. Therein, the federal trial court judge wrote one of the finest decisions ever to come out of a federal criminal court -- which tracked perfectly with the original intent of all of the Founding Fathers when they approved the Constitution and later the Bill of Rights. However, the decision was appealed. Alas, although the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court that the Second Amendment protects an individual right of the people to keep and bear arms, they reversed...