Posts filed under 'U.S. Constitution'
June 12th, 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court RULED this morning that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
The scary thing about the ruling, which is a defeat for the Bush administration, is that four of the nine justices (including Chief Justice John Roberts) voted against it.
The decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, has one line that’s likely to become memorable: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
POSTSCRIPT: Speaking of conservative Republican judicial appointees, how about THIS GUY?
May 8th, 2008
Excuse me for being more logical than emotional, but I’ve always had a greater affection for the U.S. Constitution than the American flag.
Don’t get me wrong. I respect the flag, and I think everyone should. But the flag doesn’t give us the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. The Constitution does.
So, why are we supposed to treat the flag with almost religious reverence, but nobody’s going to get upset if I carelessly throw a copy of the Constitution in the garbage?
The answer, I think, is that the flag is about emotion, while the Constitution is about complicated concepts.
The flag is great for raising goosebumps at patriotic parades, but it’s the Constitution that gives us the right to speak our minds, to embrace the religions of our choice, to be tried in courts of law by juries of our peers, and to enjoy our many other hard-won freedoms.
That’s why I think it’s wrong to say American warriors have fought and died for the flag. I’d rather think that they fought and died for the principles embodied in the Constitution.
Every nation has a flag. Only America has the U.S. Constitution.
Where can I get one of those Constitution lapel pins?
April 22nd, 2008
In a speech last week at the Associated Press annual meeting in Washington, Hillary Clinton said that she will, if elected president, “restore respect for our co-equal branches of government.”
I can only wonder if any of the eminent news executives in the audience recognized that Clinton was wrong about this “co-equal” stuff.
(To be fair to Clinton, it should be noted that her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama, has made the same mistake.)
The notion that the Constitution created three co-equal branches of government is an article of faith among most Americans. It’s popularly viewed as the provision that gives us our system of checks and balances. But it’s not true.
Clinton, like Obama and most of the other politicians who play the co-equal card, intend to argue against any presumption that the presidency is pre-eminent.
But the fact is that the Founding Fathers did not create a system of co-equal branches of government. Rather, they intended for the legislative branch to be dominant, as is evidenced in the Federalist Papers and even in some of the arguments against ratification of the Constitution from people who wanted co-equal branches and regretted that they weren’t getting them.
Historian Garry Wills presents a convincing case against the “co-equal” theory — and against various other popular myths about the Constitution — in his wonderful book “A Necessary Evil,” which was published in 1999.
In that same year, Wills addressed the “co-equal” issue in THIS LECTURE at Harvard University. (Scroll down to pages 14 through 17 for the salient parts.)
February 13th, 2008
In a post here yesterday, I wrote about a FAKE LINCOLN QUOTATION used by Iraq war hawks to impugn the patriotism of members of Congress who dare to second-guess the Bush administration’s policy.
The subject warrants further discussion, methinks, especially with regard to the widespread notion that the only constitutional roles for Congress in matters of war are to authorize military action and provide the funds.
President Bush embraced this tortured view when he said this in a radio address last fall: ”We do not need members of Congress telling our commanders what to do.”
That sentiment does not comport with the constitutional niceties of such matters.
Consider these remarks by the legendary American statesman Daniel Webster during the Mexican War of the late 1840s:
If the war should become odious to the people, if they shall disapprove the objects for which it appears to be prosecuted, then it will be the bounden duty of their representatives in Congress to demand of the President a full statement of his objects and purposes, and if those purposes shall appear to them not to be founded in the public good, or not consistent with the honor and character of the country, then it shall be their duty to put an end to it, by the exercise of their constitutional authority. . . . If Congress, in whom the war-making power is expressly made to reside, is to have no voice in the declaration or continuance of war, if it is not to judge of the beginning or carrying it on, then we depart at once from the Constitution.
Or consider these words from Sen. Henry Clay during that same period:
Must we blindly continue the conflict without any visible object, or any prospect of a definite termination? . . . If it be contended that war having been once commenced, the President of the United States may direct it to the accomplishment of any object he pleases, without consulting and without any regard to the will of Congress, the Convention will have utterly failed in guarding the nation against the abuses and ambition of a single individual. Either Congress or the President must have the right of determining upon the objects for which a war shall be prosecuted. There is no other alternative. If the President possess it and may prosecute it for the objects against the will of Congress, where is the difference between our free government and that of any other nation which may be governed by an absolute czar, emperor, or king?
January 15th, 2008
Mike Huckabee, the Baptist minister who’s running for president, SAID Monday that he thinks we should “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards…”
OK, we could do that. One problem, though, Mike. Who’s going to decide what “God’s standards” are? You? Me? The pope? Pat Robertson? Some rabbi? Maybe a Muslim?
You see, Mike, most Americans believe in God, but they don’t all agree on what God wants. Even within a given religion or denomination — take Catholicism, for instance — the faithful are not of one mind on how best to serve or please God.
Maybe it’s best to leave the Constitution the way it is and not try to fill it with your ideas of what pleases God. Millions of other religious Americans have ideas different from yours on that score.
Maybe, too, you should just go back to preaching in churches and forget this notion that you’re qualified to be our president. Lots of good and faithful Christians — not to mention plenty of people of other religions or no religion at all — think you’re not qualified. Your proposal to change the Constitution only proves their point.
January 15th, 2008
In a recent SPEECH at DePaul University in Chicago, Barack Obama referred to the Constitution having made Congress a “co-equal” branch of government.
This notion of co-equal branches is an article of faith among most Americans. It’s popularly viewed as the provision that gives us our system of checks and balances. But it’s not true.
The irony in this matter is that Obama, like most of the other politicians who play the co-equal card, intend to argue against any presumption that the presidency is pre-eminent.
The fact is that the Founding Fathers did not create a system of co-equal branches of government. Rather, they intended for the legislative branch to be dominant, as is evidenced in the Federalist Papers and even in some of the arguments against ratification of the Constitution from people who wanted co-equal branches and regretted that they weren’t getting them.
Historian Garry Wills presents a convincing case against the “co-equal” theory — and against various other popular myths about the Constitution — in his wonderful book “A Necessary Evil,” which was published in 1999.
In that same year, Wills addressed the “co-equal” issue in THIS LECTURE at Harvard University. (Scroll down to pages 14 through 17 for the salient parts.)
