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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (3901)	6/28/2001 11:12:12 PM
From: ManyMoose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

You got that one right. <<<<The Constitution is a legally binding contract between our government and the people, the Magna Carta is not.>>> A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (3901)	6/29/2001 5:30:33 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

Quite true. But governance is an evolving process and the Magna Carta was a major break in that process towards democracy. Other governments have their own Constitutions as well. The Framers didn't create the Constitution and Bill of Rights out of thin air; they took from other governments what they thought was best and added some new ideas of their own. But it might be naive to think that those other governments stayed static over the following 200 years as well, or that there is no other document [Constitution] in the world that is not binding between the government and its people. On the one hand, we have pretend that there is completely unrestricted Freedom of speech; though we all know that you don't have the right to yell fire in a theatre among other things. Conservatives will praise Free Speech to the hilt and note that Germany is deficient in free speech because they have outlawed the publication of Neo-Nazi literature. Turn the page and the conservatives are pressing for the criminalization and suppression of pornography. And incensed when the Supreme Court doesn't go their way. We want a tax deduction for children, but let us not tell them about sex in schools. Let's not look at the statistics in Europe where they have more extensive sex education programs than the US. We might find that they wait later in life to have sex or that they are more statistically inclined to be married first before they have sex. Let's come up with all sorts of excuses to not look at the data. Let's just leave it as we are the greatest country in the world, play the star spangled banner or national anthem from time to time. Consider just the United States. The US Constitution was not the first document out of the Framers. It was preceeded by the Articles of Confederation. The Bill of Rights was not added till later, and their have been more than a couple of Amendments to the Constitution since then. Perhaps even the repeal of one or two. While not a Constitutional document, the Civil Rights Bill wasn't written in the 1700s or early 1800s. It's an evolving process of governence and rights. IMO, how we arrived at the documents, i.e, Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc. is as important as the documents. Small example: Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had term limits; under the Constitution those term limits were removed. Do we evolve forward by having a Constitutional amendment to add term limits back into the Constitution when the Framers consciously removed them? Does anyone give a damn why the Framers removed term limits? In the 200+ years, democratic principles were not easy to come by and they haven't been easy to maintain. jttmab

To: TigerPaw who wrote (3901)	6/29/2001 7:03:31 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 93284

Re:The Constitution is a legally binding contract between our government and the people Sometimes it take an hour or two to jog the cobwebs off some memories. When the Constitution was sent back to the States for ratification, the members quite explicity stated the the Constitution was not to be submitted to the people for a popular vote. One State departed from this guidance, i.e., Rhode Island. In fact it was submitted twice for a popular vote and in both instances the public voted against ratification. It wasn't even a close vote; it was a landslide against ratification in both instances. Will of the People and all that good stuff. At this point in time 12 of the 13 States had ratified. Washington signed an Executive Order that, as of a certain date, no state that ratified the Constitution shall have trade with any State that had not ratified the Constitution. It didn't take Rhode Island very long to figure out who that applied to; bright conservatives no doubt. Did Rhode Island take the issue to a popular vote? Nah. The State government ratified the Constitution and the full 13 States had ratified the Constitution. Three cheers for free trade..hip, hip, hurrah! So the esoteric question is posed. Is the Constitution a legally binding document between the Federal Government and the people or is it a legally binding document between the Federal Government and the States? jttmab