http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eWFLZwHCak&feature=player_embedded

I have embed fail.  

"“Freedom of speech.”  “Due process of law.”  These terms don’t define themselves.  The Fourth Amendment protects “the right of the people against unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Eighth Amendment outlaws “cruel and unusual punishments.”  What makes a search unreasonable, or a punishment cruel?  The document itself doesn’t tell us.

The constitutional fundamentalists tell us we should interpret the words of the Constitution as they were understood at the time they were written, more than 200 years ago.  But they can’t really mean that.  At that time, all felonies were subject to the death penalty, and flogging was a common punishment for crime. Today, we consider such punishments cruel and unusual, thank goodness.

The words the Framers chose are not just broad and open-ended.  More importantly, they express basic values.  To enforce basic values, you need to make value judgments.  And value judgments change as the world changes, even when the underlying values stay the same."

The phrase.. "Shall not be infringed" is pretty straight forward.

He is a believer in the so called "living Constitution." Value judgements can be used to twist the wisdom of the Framers to meet any agenda Cingress might have. The Constitution can be apllied to any situation while being interpreted as strictly as possible. Value judgements are what got the United States in the mess it is in right now.

THIS!





No matter kind of bullshit they spew about "interpretations" and "changing value" this and amendments 9 and 10 can't be misconstrued



ETA: For 2 of my other favorite amendments





 

one would think



 

He is creating a strawman argument. Outside of a minority of ultra-strict constructionists, no one disputes that value judgements need to be made. The dispute is about the basis for those value judgements. "Living document" people want those judgements to be based off of the whims and popular sentiment of the day. "Originalist" interpretation of the Constitution simply means to take the common sense meaning of the actual meaning of the words and then apply them to a particular circumstance. The basis for the value judgements therefore comes from the meaning of the text itself. On the other hand "living document" folks neuter the Constitution and subject it to the same problems and abuses that the British Constitution faced which was that the British Consitution was was essentially whatever Parliament decided it should be that day. For them, the Constitution means whatever it ought to have meaned.  

All of the other arguments are easily dismissed... all felonies are not subject to the death penalty because we have a democratic system whereby we can create LAWS specifying other punishments within the consitutional framework. The Constitution is supposed to create a charter or framework for our democracy, not tell us how much we should be fined for a traffic ticket.

I look at it this way.  Felonies back then were probably more severe violations than they are now, and most likely were violent.  These days, you don't pay your taxes and it could be a felony.

And now every damn thing is a felony.  I wonder what the founding fathers would say (and do) about that?

Stealing chickens was a felony, as PAEBR will soon remind us.

And I highly doubt all felonies were subject to the death penalty in 1783.

THE pitfall of fundamental constitutionalism to a democrat is that they would have to acknowledge a rule of law.

I actually think we should go back to the death penalty for felonies and frequent floggings.

What a dumb ass, he acts like it's a one way street as if his interpretation is the only way to go.  

Once and if he gets his wish that the compact between the many States is only so much toilet paper or at best modeling clay, he may not like the results.

My interpretation would certainly scare the hell out of him and I only advocate putting it back where it started, I am sure there are others who would go much further.

So he is what he is, a useful idiot for the haters of freedom in the world and the others who would control us.  

It's funny how the left marries socialism with liberalism as if the two were compatible when they are in fact opposites, you cannot have a liberal society where the right's of the individual are respected and then take all of the fruits of their labor and divvy them out amongst your constituents, logic they don't have it.

As soon as I hear 'living' document, I knows they be a commie.

I see that he is a closed minded idiot that is not open to new ideas. Marx and Keynes are his Gods and all things must be interpreted according to their scripture.

I've always been a big fan of "Tarred, feathered and rode out of town on a rail." too!

Yeah, back then not everything was a felony. There is a wide gap between murder and sticking a vertical grip on a pistol.

A felony was originally a serious breach of the contract between vassal and lord in the days of feudalism; often they involved something to do with property and involved forfeiture of goods and property.  A murder, under the original definition, was not a felony, although it was still a heinous at punishable by death.  

As the Common Law developed it produced a meaning of felony more divorced from the feudal definition and was basically applied to any crime under the Common Law that was punishable by death, forfeiture of goods and property, and/or corruption of blood, while the feudal meaning, while not immediately disappearing, faded over time, except when it came to treason and petit treason (disloyalty to husband, master, etc.).  

Over time felonies became more associated with the death penalty than with forfeiture, but the latter definition still remained.  The traditional Common Law felonies were murder (degree did not matter and I don't think it was used then; murder was murder, as it should be), manslaughter, arson, robbery, rape, sodomy, mayhem, and larceny; treason and petit treason remained felonies as well.  Felony also came to mean crimes designated such and worthy of death or forfeiture (usually the former) by statute.  

When we were founded, this was the status of the term, although in America, forfeiture as punishment had become rare, the use of the death penalty had become less frequent, and prison more frequent, for felonies, although all in all a felony was still a rather serious crime (with prison sentences usually being lengthy).  Many of the things we consider felonies today would not have been considered anything more than a high misdemeanor back then while others would have not been considered crimes at all.  When the Constitution was ratified, corruption of blood as a punishment was completely taken off the table.

What led to the current definition of felony as being any crime punishable by statute by a fine exceeding X or a prison term greater than a year's length was the departure from the Common Law and the codification of law as was being done in Continental Europe (such as France under Napoleon) at the time.

In Continental Europe the terminology has largely remained intact, also resulting in the overlapping of conservative and liberal which would sound rather odd here; it should be noted that many true liberals were not and are not classical liberals; classical liberalism is a reference to a specific kind of liberalism that first appeared in the mid-19th century.

In the U.S. and to a lesser extent in the rest of the English speaking world the change was due to the collapse of classical liberalism, which had become the predominant type of liberalism in the Western world.  While it collapsed on the Continent as well the collapse in America especially took on a different character.  The classical liberals here had a strong desire to be considered trendy, futuristic, advanced, etc.  As progressivis increasingly became popular on its rise to political dominance, the classical liberals, whose belief in liberty had become divorced from metaphysical considerations, so as not to be seen as passe, became progressives but refused to relinquish the term liberal for themselves, which ultimately resulted in the great semantic confusion present in America today.  True liberals eventually gave up trying to hold onto the term and either called themselves conservatives or libertarians (in Europe the latter term developed separately and came to mean a type of anarcho-socialist).

Set rules and regulations with equitable application for all. That destroys the PC methodology and underlying philosophy of the left.

Exactly. Hence the reason that if they got their wish they'd be the first to get aboard the train.

Each and every time a country goes Socialist or communist some tens of millions HAVE to die. Guess what category those that brought about the revolution wind up. You can't have revolutionaries around when you want to oppress.

How many laws did we have 200 years ago?



there are too damn many laws now.



Fire arms related laws are just one small section that could use a lot of repealing, deleting...



And we have a lot of people in need of being put to death.

Liberal, progressive, humanist. Whatever they call themselves its always it will always have a positive connotation that is echoed by the complicit MSM. Any label except 'socialist' will suffice from their standpoint. Any description except the truth.