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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (229399)	4/15/2005 5:32:00 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573922

No, its inferred. Its not specifically referenced but its implied. There is no even indirect reference to a generalized right to privacy nor to a specific right to abortion. There also is nothing in the constitution that logically implies such a right. That's right.......because its inferred......here's one more description of what I mean as presented by the Libertarian party's candidate for president in 1996. If he can't explain it adequately to you, then I give up.......after all, you say you're a libertarian: Does the Constitution Contain a Right to Privacy? by Harry Browne May 9, 2003 Senator Rick Santorum recently caused a brouhaha when, during an Associated Press interview, he defended laws against sodomy — saying that permitting sodomy is as good as saying polygamy, incest, and adultery should be permitted. This provoked a firestorm — and that caused a far more troubling Santorum statement to be overlooked. He said: It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution . . . Is there a right to privacy in the Constitution? Well, I searched my copy of the Constitution of the United States and I couldn't find the word privacy anywhere in the document. Does this mean the Senator is right? I also searched the Constitution and I couldn't find the word marriage either. Does that mean I don't have a right to be married — that a so-called "right to marriage" was invented by some bleeding-heart liberal judge somewhere? The Constitution also doesn't include the right to buy products from foreigners, or to have children, or to read a book, or even to eat food to survive. How could the Constitution have overlooked such basic human rights? Because the Constitution isn't about what people can do; it's about what government can do. The Constitution was created to spell out the limited rights or powers given to the federal government. And it was clearly understood that the government had no powers that weren't authorized in the Constitution. The Bill of Rights The original Constitution contained no Bill of Rights, because the authors believed it wasn't necessary — since the Constitution clearly enumerated the few powers the federal government was given. However, some of the Founding Fathers thought there could be misunderstandings. So a Bill of Rights was composed — and some states ratified the Constitution only on condition that those amendments would be added to the Constitution. Whereas the main part of the Constitution spells out the few things that government may do or must do, the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights spell out what government may not do. For example: The government can't search or seize your property without due process of law, It can't keep you in jail indefinitely without a trial, It can't enact laws abridging the freedom of speech or religion, or infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. And various other prohibitions on government activity are spelled out. The ninth and tenth amendments were included to make absolutely sure there was no misunderstanding about the limited powers the Constitution grants to the federal government. Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Now, where's the right to privacy? It is clearly in those two amendments. The government has no power to tell people what to do except in areas specifically authorized in the Constitution. That means it has no right to tell people whether or not they can engage in homosexual acts; no right to invade our privacy; no right to manage our health-care system; no right to tell us what a marriage is; no right to run our lives; no right to do anything that wasn't specifically authorized in the Constitution. (Notice also that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that government may violate the Bill of Rights if the target of its wrath is a non-citizen. Government isn't authorized to jail non-citizens indefinitely or deny them due process of law. There's a good reason for that, but that's another subject.) harrybrowne.org

To: TimF who wrote (229399)	4/15/2005 5:39:16 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573922

Tim, just because its not what you want, that doesn't mean the judge came to the conclusion on a whim. You might be surprised but I agree Roe vs. Wade wasn't decided on a whim. Years before the decision some ideas deviated from the constitution, that some new decisions pushed the ideas further and so on, eventually leading to Roe. Each new decision was only a modest leap from the last, not something entirely made up out of whole cloth at the time the decision was made. The idea behind this process is the so called "living constitution". Yes......and your objection is? The court doesn't just "invent" something out of thin air. There must be a basis in the law for it to render its opinion. Actually there is no must about it. Other than a constitutional amendment, a higher court overruling it (which can't happen to the USSC) or a constitutional crises if the other branches ignore the ruling a court can decide whatever it wants. It should be limited to what the law says but in practice there is no enforcement mechanism. Yes, there is........actually two things. The ruling has to make legal sense. A judge can't make it up, or he/she will be disbarred. And if there is some part of the ruling that is questionable, there is an appeal process. " I also wouldn't like ruling that would support my ideas but that aren't in the constitution. I can think of a number of court decisions where the result was favorable to my opinion but where the decision was constitutionally questionable." I am not surprised. Your thinking seems to be very unconstitutional. Few ideas are truly unconstitutional but how they get applied in law, or in a court decision can be. Maybe but there is a way of thinking that tends to be unconstitutional. I find that to be true for a number of people who ideologically hail from the right. I generally support individual freedom (nothing unconstitutional about that), but that doesn't mean that the states don't have the constitutional power to restrict individual freedom in any number of ways. They might make some stupid and unjust laws that should be gotten rid of, but if they the states are not forbidden by the constitution from passing such a law there is no justification for the courts to overturn state laws. I'm glad that some of these laws that have been overturned by the courts are now gone but the courts usurped the role of the state legislatures in order to strike down these laws. They did not usurp the role of the state legislatures. Rather, they were 'checking' the state legislatures........which is the way its supposed to work in the checks and balances system. ted