"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ."


Bastards keep making themselves exempt from everything they pass

Never happen.  Ever.

Doesn't the 14th Ammendment apply to that scenario?

Not that I don't agree 100% with you, just we don't need more laws.

I think the laws typically do apply to them in theory, just not in practice.

PLEASE people.  AMENDMENT.    Not 'ammendment'.

You AMEND something.  What you AMENDED becomes an AMENDMENT.  You do not double the 'M' in amend.

i would rather see a amendment that forces congress to verify that laws are actually constitutional, by open commitee and if a law is passed that is not then legislators are guilty of crimes against the american people

Dumb, because it hardly changes anything, and doesn't change anything that needs to be changed.



Laws already apply evenly to people in office and people not in office.



The narrow exceptions are written into the constitutional already.

That's much dumber, because it is an ex post facto law, because it punishes people for something that was legal when they did it.
 

I vote that we just reinstate the Constitution and let states figure out their own problems.

The federal government should be protecting this country first and foremost, not interviewing baseball players over steroids, giving out free taxpayer money, legislating health care, or anything else not specifically granted to them by the people.

this.

Winner right here!!!

I wish that could happen. But no "law maker" would make that into law.

Did you just get this in your email?

term limits

repeal of 17th

They already explicitly state the constitutional authority for every law, in the text of the bill.



If they don't the Supreme Court tends to strike them down when challenged.



 

Except that they are using the 'explicitly granted authority' in the Constitution to do ALL of those things.





The notion that Congress just 'does' stuff, and hopes no one notices, is absurd...




To the people doing it, it's very much constitutional...



There is not, nor will there ever be, an agreement in American politics on this issue, as all major political factions love using the term 'unconstitutional' to beat each other over the head, while claiming that their own positions are very much Constitutional...



And both sides will have Constitutional text to cite claiming why they're both right....





 

I'm all for repeal of the 17th.....

also ALL laws should have an absolute sunset...... they EVERY SINGLE ONE should be revisited individually and voted on individually for reinstatement if they are constitutional and worthy of being law......

No they don't, the laws that apply to them are just not generally enforced.  It is good to be the King.



BADGER


That only
matters to the people on


the rim.





 

BULLSHIT, and you know it. Next your going to agree with the 'general welfare' argument which is a total distortion of original intent. You and every other distortionist know that the Federalist Papers are the user's manual for the Constitution and does not in any way describe such powers by congress. Stop playing the half-full, half-empty constitutional crap that has been hoodwinked over the populace for the last 100 years.

What is that supposed to mean, "reinstate the constitution" ?



Do you propose we get rid of all the amendments? All but the first ten?



On it's own, that statement doesn't mean anything. It's word-salad. No different from announcing that you vote we just tiddlywink half the nylons and put yellow paper keys away for the surfers to see.



No meaning at all.



 

That hasn't been common practice in a while, Dave.

ETA: Unless you mean something inane such as "WHEREAS: The Congress is granted authority to legislate pursuant to Article I of the United States Constitution; and, WHEREAS: We are the Congress..."

Wrong again.  Dave, stop talking about the Constitution like you know what it means.  It's both tiresome and annoying.  As I have stated in the past, I have used your posts more than once to illustrate for study groups poor Constitutional analysis.  And I have, many times now, explained to you why you are wrong.  Others have, too, I'm just the only moron who continues to remind you that you are wrong.  Everyone else just chuckles and posts elsewhere.

As to the OP: there is no point.  This is already covered under the 14th Amendment.  Besides, if the amendment were ratified as is, there would be some serious issues with pay for Congressmen.

The second is exactly what I mean.





 

Really?  Wow.  You have no concept of enumerated powers or federalism, do you?  You do understand that the Federal Constitution is a granting document, right, not a restricting one (as compared to state constitutions)?

ETA: The language I used above was meant to mock the current language in most bills.  It is a Constitutional justification as much as "WHEREAS: The Congress is smarter than all of you..." is.  Laws were once written in such a way that Congress explained, exactly, which enumerated power they were using to enact new law.  Not the case anymore.

You completely miss the point.



You can sit here and 'chuckle' all you want...



The fact is, the  above is EXACTLY what goes through their minds...



There is no 'conspiracy to subvert/ignore the Constitution'.



Rather, the people passing these laws honestly believe the Constitution grants them the authority to do so...



Both sides are quick to whip out the 'Unconstitutional' label.



And both sides will respond with 'No it's not, and here's why'.



Which is what I said above...



The problem is NOT 'people ignoring the Constitution' as is so commonly claimed on this site.



It's the fact that Liberals & Conservatives do not agree on what the Constitution means.
 

No, most of them openly ignore the Constitution.  Many of them have openly stated as much.  You haven't heard Congressmen say, "who cares what the Constitution says?" or "I have no idea what the Constitutional justification is––maybe it's the good and proper clause?"

They make stuff up because they think they have all authority.  Just look at what happened in Argentina when they decided federalism didn't matter.

ETA: The early progressives were explicit on this stuff: they KNEW they were trying to do things that violated the Constitution.  They explicitly planned to circumvent it.  You know why they had to do this from the federal level?  Because those states that you thought were so corrupt and easy to manipulate resisted the progressive movement.  Why in the world do you think the progressives proposed the 17th Amendment?  They could not take over nearly 50 states, so they consolidated and attacked the federal government.  And they wanted to take the states out of the fight.  And they won.

See the point of the second statement (which you missed the first time you answered it).



Since the overwhelming majority of people writing the laws honestly believe they have the Constitutional authority to do what they do...



Procedures to 'have Congress verify Constitutionality' are moot - they already believe the law to be Constitutional when the write it.



Hence those statements.



It's not 'Congress passing laws without considering/while ignoring the Constitution'.



It's 'Congress passing laws, based on their belief that the language of the Constitution provides a federal power to do whatever the law does'
 

Look how close they followed the whole "no income tax" thing.  They're a stickler for the rules.

Demonstrably false.  Your circular arguments are insulting to you.  You make a Constitutional argument (poorly), then come up with this BS about "well they think they are being Constitutional, so their Constitutional justification is that they think they have the power."  That's just astonishingly stupid, and you know it.

I've seen Congressmen offer some pretty weak 'why this is Constitutional' explanations for laws they sypport - Health Care producing some of the worst.



And I've seen more than one state a law they opposed the passage of is unconstitutional (as noted above in my post, I'd call it a 'common tactic').



However, I would NOT say that they are ignoring the Constitution.



I will grant you that the Lib view of the document is so skewed compared to the Conservative one, that it may SEEM to some that they are flat out ignoring it...



Now, if we want to talk about ACTUALLY ignoring the Constitution, then the Supreme Court - esp Slaughterhouse, and some of their other more creative rulings - would be the subject at hand...



 

Dave, the movement that led to the modern Democrat Party explicitly stated that one of its goals was to remove/bypass the limitations the Constitution placed on the national government.

Would make the rules of the House and Senate tricky to write...

There was never any such provision. Congress has always had the power to tax income - in fact, the Constitution's power to tax does not provide for any list of things that can't be taxed. An ammendment was added to prohibit poll taxes.



There is a constitutional prohibition against direct taxation without apportioning (distributing) the funds to the states. Which is how the first income tax was struck down.



But the 16th Amendment exempts Income Tax from that, and the second income tax was thus explicitly Constitutional.



 

Actually, I haven't made a single Constitutional argument in this thread - although you keep looking for one.



My argument in this thread is ENTIRELY about the state of mind of legislators as they pass laws.



The 'reference to Constitutional Authoriity' portion - the 'Whereas' statements - was evidence of this.



 

Which movement? Progressives? Jacksonians?



Obviously not the D-Rs, since they were opposed to the federal govt in the first place - at least initially...



For a bunch of folks who are trying to bypass the Constitution, they're awful fond of it when it suits their political talking points...



Which brings us back to 'The Libs see the document as meaning and saying something entirely different than Conservatives do - but they still follow 'their version''



 

I was referring to the Progressive Movement.  And, again, they were clear that they wanted to bypass the Constitution.  Among their goals was to make the Constitution to be considered more fluid while their ultimate goal (in this area) was to make the Constitution meaningless.  So, sure, if by "they operate under the Constitution as they interpret it," you mean "the Constitution is meaningless," then, sure, they operate under their definition of the Constitution.

Before anything else, we need an amendment that outlaws central, private banking, and reaffirms our sovereign duty to print money.

Rule of law......Never happen.......What a monster have we wrought.....

That's an even worse idea than the original one, since yours would actually change something, and it would change it for the worse.



The worst the original one would do is waste time and money.
 

I think you are right about this in a way in regards to many (perhaps the majority) of Congressmen.  They and their predecessors (as an ideological bloc as opposed to actual individuals) have over the years deliberately distorted things and deliberately stripped the law of all emeaning using hermeneutics favorable to them that they believe their distortions to be the truth.  They honeslt ybelieve they are correctly interpreting the law.  It is kind of like the liar who tells the lie so often that he ends up genuinely believing it to be true and the truth itself gets lost entirely.  I would say this pervades not only the Congress but the administrative and judicial branches as well.  Then there are some who don't care what the constitution says, or deliberately violate it and once in awhile even flaunt it, and also some who are simply igorant (of the law or in general) or stupid or who simply have bigger concerns than the law, such as winning the next election.

You are correct.  Their intent was to deprive the words in the law and thus the law itself of meaning which then allows them to make it mean whatever they want it to mean.  That was the whole point of their movement in the legal realm.  Interestingly, if I recall correctly, they actually used hermeneutics developed by German theologians some time ago intended to make the Bible mean whatever they wanted it to mean.  What one must recall is that the Progressive ideology at its core rejects certain concepts or ideas, to include things like transcendental truths.  They are very relativistic.  There may as well be no real truth except certain ideas they have like that of inevitable unending "progress" and such.  They apply this to words and the law.  Since there is no objective absolute truth, there can be no objective absolute definitions of words, and thus we can start to inject our own ideas into what a word means.  The potential for abuse is substantial and THAT is the real point.  Without that they could not get most of their agenda accomplished because the law stood in the way and Americans have always had a certain amount of reverence for the Constitution.

I heard an interesting quote once attributed to Confucius.  It said that "When words lose their meaning, people lose their freedom."  Certainly seems like that saying has been proven correct time and time again, including here in the United States.  The Progressives and their allies and ideological competitors (and even some of their opponents, like some classical liberals) were able to deprive the words in the law of their meaning and lo and behold once that happened we started to lose our freedom and have headed without pause down that dreadful path.  I think the Marquis de Tocqueville also predicted such a thing.  Someone else said that once a lie is repeated enough it is accepted as truth (I don't recall who).  We have also observed this in American society and even legal and political thought.

Interestingly, the gay movement is using similar tactics on the marriage issue (and most pushing it are of the ideologies we have been talking about, unsurprisingly), but that is for another topic.

BS and you know it.  Both sides pass whatever they want to and wait and see if somebody can overturn it.  Nevermind the Executive Orders that nobody has to vote on.

Q:  Is there anything that you think the present gov't does that actually IS NOT benificial.  My God, dude, every time there's a thread against anything gov't status quo, you're like a ravenous dog defending anything and everything that the gov't is and does today.  Isn't it rather obvious that so many facets of gov't are broken today that something should be done to restore it to some semblence of representing the people?  According to you - NO - it works great.

ETA:  I know it's no good.  Might as well find the closet wall and beat my head against it.  I'm arguing with the wisest, most experienced 30 yo that ever walked the planet.  Even facts are no match for this wise and experienced person.