Reading the Constitution

[fbmf]

I caught a quick sound bite on the radio that Democrats or Liberals are freaking out that the Republicans want to read the Constitution before the next session of congress gets started.

I don't get it. These are federal employees, and the guidelines for how to do their job is in the Constitution. What's the problem?

I like it when players show up to the game and know how all their class features and spells work.

I want to be told that there is something crucial that I missed.

Game On,
fbmf

[Juton]

Sounds like a strawman to me.

[Prak]

because then people will know when your people are trying to do something unconstitutional?

As filibusters go, this is one I can get behind.

[shadzar]

was about to say that it is one hell of a filibuster....but maybe they might learn something about how to do their jobs, and what their jobs really are if they actually DID read it.

was it like as the session starts read it like the minutes of the last meeting, or read it beforehand to acquaint themselves with it?

[Doom]

Wow, our Leaders are going to read the Constitution?

Next thing you know, they might even consider following it.

[name_here]

It strikes me as a waste of time. They're also apparently planning on requiring every bill to have a citation of the constitution to explain how the bill is constitutional.

It's pretty much just grandstanding, but not a terribly big deal.

[Blasted]

It strikes me as a waste of time. They're also apparently planning on requiring every bill to have a citation of the constitution to explain how the bill is constitutional.

It's pretty much just grandstanding, but not a terribly big deal.

That seems to me to be a pretty big deal. Instead of debating the content of the bill, they will be debating the interpretation of the constitution. So whenever they want to reject a bill, it will be all about how the democrats don't understand or are trying to take away from the constitution.
So I suspect that the next set of elections could be fought over who's trying to make the constitution say what.

[Gnosticism Is A Hoot]

It's a pointless distraction at worst, and a trivial piece of symbolism at best.

No, I mean it.

Reading the Constitution will not tell Congresscritters how to do their jobs, because the modern United States is nothing like the elitist agrarian republic imagined by the Founding Fathers. 200+ years of social change and Supreme Court case law stand between us and the original meaning of the Constitution, and pretending that we can overlook those things is pure stupidity. EDIT: Or disingenuous political posturing. I don't pretend that every Constitutional Originalist is a moron.

This is tiresome political theatre from the Republicans, and nothing more. It's an attempt to pretend that Republicans take the Constitution more seriously than Democrats, which is beyond ridiculous.

/rant.

[tzor]

Reading the Constitution will not tell Congresscritters how to do their jobs, because the modern United States is nothing like the elitist agrarian republic imagined by the Founding Fathers. 200+ years of social change and Supreme Court case law stand between us and the original meaning of the Constitution, and pretending that we can overlook those things is pure stupidity. EDIT: Or disingenuous political posturing. I don't pretend that every Constitutional Originalist is a moron.

What a fucking piece of progressive communist claptrap. Although I will agree that 200+ years of Supreme Court Judges pulling laws out of their asses and calling it constitutional law has indeed fucked up this nation so badly, we as a nation cannot sit down without being in massive agony.

The fundamental element of the Constitution is protection against the abuses of men in power. Despots have been the same since the inbread emperors of Rome. Progressives hate this notion because they want to be despots!

Never the less, there are some things that even a wide interpertation of the constitution cannot excuse. The best example is the individual mandate to buy health insurance. You might say it is based on the interstate commerce clause, only the system as it now stands does not allow insurance to be sold across state lines ... THUS NO INTERSTATE COMMERCE.

There are some people who think that congress can do whatever the hell it likes. The current minority leader in Congress is one such gal. The constitution gave specific powers to the federal government and a way to amend itself. This is why the early Supreme Court said that the constitution can rule laws of congress null and void.

(By the way, constitutional law can be thrown away on a dime when the SCOTUS feels like it. The whole SCOTUS case law and tradition is one huge joke. And don't even get me started on Constitutional Lawyers; they don't even bother to learn the Constitution because all they study is Constitutional law; the case history of the SCOTUS.)

[Zinegata]

It's probably because many conservative movements in America present themselves as "defending the constitution". In the present day, we have people like Glenn Beck. Back in the 1860s, we had the pro-slavery Democratic politicans who eventually seceded from the Union.

And in many ways their "defense of the constitution" was really little more than perpetuating their own self interests. Like how the rich Southerners of the 1860s kept pointing to the Constitution's ambiguity regarding slavery as justification for keeping it around.

That being said, I think the liberals are overreacting on this one. Just because there are some people who abuse "defense of the constitution" doesn't mean that you should attempt to denigrate any attempt to uphold it.

[fbmf]

200+ years of social change and Supreme Court case law stand between us and the original meaning of the Constitution, and pretending that we can overlook those things is pure stupidity.

So why not write a new Constitution, or formally amend the existing one?

Game On,
fbmf

[Gnosticism Is A Hoot]

Reading the Constitution will not tell Congresscritters how to do their jobs, because the modern United States is nothing like the elitist agrarian republic imagined by the Founding Fathers. 200+ years of social change and Supreme Court case law stand between us and the original meaning of the Constitution, and pretending that we can overlook those things is pure stupidity. EDIT: Or disingenuous political posturing. I don't pretend that every Constitutional Originalist is a moron.

What a fucking piece of progressive communist claptrap. Although I will agree that 200+ years of Supreme Court Judges pulling laws out of their asses and calling it constitutional law has indeed fucked up this nation so badly, we as a nation cannot sit down without being in massive agony.

Examples? I'm not sure I follow your point here; I tend to think that the Supreme Court's power of judicial review has been well used sometimes (Brown v Board, Roe v Wade) and badly used other times (Plessey v Ferguson, Citizens United). That doesn't change the fact that reading the Constitution on its own will tell you very little about modern politics; it's like trying to go from St Paul to Billy Graham without studying Martin Luther.

The fundamental element of the Constitution is protection against the abuses of men in power. Despots have been the same since the inbread emperors of Rome. Progressives hate this notion because they want to be despots!

Troll harder? It wasn't progressives who brought in warrantless wiretaps, and it wasn't a progressive VP who claimed that his office was not part of the executive branch (and thereby exempt from oversight).

That aside, while there is some truth to the 'written, sovereign Constitutions serve as a check on tyranny' argument, the Constitution alone is not sufficient to this task. Nothing is innately unconstitutional; laws and actions are only acknowledged as unconstitutional when the Supreme Court says so. Thus, my original point stands - the Constitution cannot stand apart from or be read separately to the case law that has been built up around it.

Never the less, there are some things that even a wide interpertation of the constitution cannot excuse. The best example is the individual mandate to buy health insurance. You might say it is based on the interstate commerce clause, only the system as it now stands does not allow insurance to be sold across state lines ... THUS NO INTERSTATE COMMERCE.

Actually, the interstate commerce clause is a great example of my point. While I agree that it is sometimes abused, it is utterly vital for the day-to-day governing of the nation. The document of the Constitution is vague, general, abstract (and rightly so!), and the actual business of government in the modern era requires powers which the founding fathers, despite their political wisdom, could not forsee.

There are some people who think that congress can do whatever the hell it likes. The current minority leader in Congress is one such gal. The constitution gave specific powers to the federal government and a way to amend itself. This is why the early Supreme Court said that the constitution can rule laws of congress null and void.

Congress *can* do whatever the hell it likes, until the Supreme Court decides that its actions are unconstitutional. That's what I've been trying to get at. The Constitution *cannot* stand apart from the case law and judicial interpretation that has been built up around it, because the Constitution does not have a plain, clear, unambiguous meaning that can be easily interpreted.

It's a bit like the difference between Evangelical and Roman Catholic theology. The Evangelicals pretend that there is a clear, unambiguous, literal reading of the Bible that is apparent to all, while the RCC recognises that matters are somewhat trickier.

[Gnosticism Is A Hoot]

200+ years of social change and Supreme Court case law stand between us and the original meaning of the Constitution, and pretending that we can overlook those things is pure stupidity.

So why not write a new Constitution, or formally amend the existing one?

Game On,
fbmf

Ideally, that's what would happen - but we can't pass a new amendment every time a social circumstance changes, or every time a completely new problem comes before the Supreme Court.

EDIT: I think I should clarify my point. I'm not claiming that the Constitution is useless or obsolete. I'm claiming that the actual roles of Congresspeople and the government in general have been clarified and defined by history to such an extent that just reading the Constitution doesn't tell you very much about them. Thus, this is little more than a propaganda stunt by the Republicans.

[Prak]

What a fucking piece of progressive communist claptrap.

Congrats Tzor. You've caused me to lose complete interest in this thread with your bullshit conservative red scare crap.

[fbmf]

Thus, this is little more than a propaganda stunt by the Republicans.

To what end?

Game On,
fbmf

[Gnosticism Is A Hoot]

Thus, this is little more than a propaganda stunt by the Republicans.

To what end?

Game On,
fbmf

To portray the Democrats (and maybe past Republican administrations, too) as insufficiently dedicated to the Constitution. Also, as Zinegata noted, to identify themselves as 'defenders of the Constitution'.

[Gnosticism Is A Hoot]

What a fucking piece of progressive communist claptrap.

Congrats Tzor. You've caused me to lose complete interest in this thread with your bullshit conservative red scare crap.

Hey, in my country, I'm considered centre-left at best. I thought that line was hilarious.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Having Republicans actually read the Constitution will be amazing. Many Republicans have viewed the Constitution how Fundamentalists have viewed the Bible: they take it as an article of faith that (1) it's literally true and (2) it agrees with them in every way. If more Fundamentalists (Constitutional or Christian) read the entirety of their respective religious texts, out country may just get a little bit more sane.

[Maxus]

I saw a news story about this.

The Tea Partiers are in for a surprise when they find out that Article 1 of the Constitution allows the federal government to make whatever laws it sees for the general welfare of the American people. The Fed explicitly has that power.

It is an exceptionally broad power.

[K]

It's a stunt because they want to seem like the "Constitution Party."

Conservatives, Tea Partiers and Republicans usually want a strict reading of the Constitution that says that the Federal government has next to no power. They won't even accept a strict reading that says otherwise, or a flexible reading that might say otherwise.

They don't want to accept that the Judicial branch was created as a balance of power between the other two branches, or that it can strike down fundamentally flawed laws in any fashion.

Historically speaking, what they really seem to want is the Articles of Confederation, the thing we had before the Constitution where the federal government basically only got to make war. The problem with that is we figured out really fast that a toothless Federal government led to states being total dicks with each other and it was totally unworkable. This is why it lasted like a year before we had to go back to the drawing board and create the Constitution.

Basically, the three groups listed above hate the Federal government and any reading of the Constitution that lets it strike down state laws because it means that states can't pass unfair laws based on local hysteria (like Arizona's immigration law, for example, or local sodomy laws). They really want some idealized past where the US was a police state (which it never was, but don't tell them that).

Personally, I think they don't they even need to be addressed. I don't see why anything some guys thought up 200 years ago should be relevant now considering that the average high school student now is better educated that the average Founding Father. Progressives recognize that maybe we've learned something in the last 200 years and maybe our laws should reflect that.

It's a basic truth that the state governments are next to powerless. The fact that the groups I mentioned want all legal power to rest in the state is basically a call to anarchy. They'd like to destroy things like the FDA.... you know, the organization that keeps the poison out of your food?

[Zinegata]

The Constitution itself is a pretty solid foundation regarding the rights and responsibilities of both the people and the government. That's why it's been copied by other countries for their own constitutions.

The problem really, is when people only start interpreting the Constitution in an extremely narrow way. The Constitution, as originally drafted, was a careful balance between government control and of individual rights.

While it's true that some conservatives have historically hidden behind the constitution to argue things like "abolition of slavery violates my right to property", there are likewise far left folks (i.e. commies) who insist that private property shouldn't even exist and be distributed by the government to the people. The Constitution thus also exists to prevent the government from commiting things like unlawful siezures - a concept completely foreign to most Americans but a terrible fact of life for most of the Third World.

So if you read the Constitution, it should really be from the perspective that it aims to be a balance between government and individual rights. Not that there should be no government, or that there should be no individual rights.

[Maj]

To portray the Democrats (and maybe past Republican administrations, too) as insufficiently dedicated to the Constitution. Also, as Zinegata noted, to identify themselves as 'defenders of the Constitution'.

Bingo.

Having Republicans actually read the Constitution will be amazing.

Agreed.

I don't have any problem with the idea that it will be read when Congress convenes. I think it's BS to require a constitutional reference everytime a bill is proposed.

[Username17]

It's a time wasting stunt. But yeah, the intention is to convert everything into a sophomoric argument about constitutional intention rather than actually discussing anything substantive or relevant.

Also, they are reading the original document and then the amendments, rather than the amended document. Which is pretty damn weird. So they are going to read aloud that it is OK to keep slaves before they get to the part where No, it really isn't. And they are going to read the part where the federal government is empowered to make the Volstead Act before reading the part where they are not.

I don't know why you would do that, except as some sort of history lesson about the march of progressivism - which the Republicans clearly aren't in to.

The US runs on a thing called Precedent. There is stuff that is legal and illegal going back to "common law" from before we even existed. The rules on how juries are supposed to be treated actually comes from a serious of actual battles in early 14th century England. I'm not even making that up. Taking any historical document out of context and reading it in bold text is a waste of time at best and an attempt at underhanded deception at worst. The proper context of course, is the fucking judicial system, whose actual job it is to keep track of all this shit as it piles up.

-Username17

[Grek]

I imagine what happened is that the guy that originally came up with the idea suggested that they read the original constitution, sans ammendments, because they felt that only the original words of the founding fathers are important. Then, when some staffer or higher up told them that it would look bad if they left in the bits about slavery and the 3/5ths compremise, they grudgingly agreed to include the ammendments.

[Sir Neil]

So why not write a new Constitution, or formally amend the existing one?

Because it's too difficult to get 2/3rds of Congress to support something, let alone the legislatures of 3/4ths states. God help you if its something controversial.

So instead the cowards try to sneak changes through and hope for a sympathetic court ruling.