is the pledge unconstitutional?

You seem not to have absorbed that these weapons were not sent to United States troops. They were sent to state arsenals.

It is completely fallacious to say that the President is "in command" of foreign policy. He cannot make any treaty with a foreign power without the consent of two thirds of the Senate. That is hardly being "in command."

I have read about the Supremes' comment on the congressional investigation. While looking around the web today, i did find a page at the University of Virginia which tells the same tale, although it's very bare bones. If you wish, i'll link that page here.

may i see it?

The Miller Center at the University of Virginia



One would have to contact the Miller Center for clarification or more details.

ok. thanks.

I realize it is not much of an argument to tell some one to shut up; but it is the best that you deserve...

If you want me to shut, stop talking to me.

Idiot.

now, now, setanta, lets be nice...

If I were talking to you and not writing on A2k, I maight have slapped your chops long ago, and then you would have had to call the police and tell them some lie about how nice you was, and how nice I wasn't...

You know something.... For that you get a prize... But you are light years from knowing everything, and your acting like you do, and writing like you do when you can't even draw the most simple accurate conclusions from what you read makes you sound really dull... I know you think your anger makes you seem bright... It does not... You are dim...

now now, fido, lets be nice...

It's really rich for you to accuse anyone else of behaving as though they knew everything. That's your m.o., not mine. You're delusional to think that you make me angry, you're not worth the expenditure of emotion.

I'd love to meet you in person, and see you attempt to slap me.

Idiot.

i think that we all need to calm down right now, because accusing each other of things does not really do anything for yourselves, nor the other. im just saying.

When I have been wrong, and it is pointed out, I have always admitted it... Given that there is real room for disagreement, and that even highly knowledgeable people often disagree on their points of expertise, all that I require is good reason to say what I say... I do not think I could prove all I think is true on good evidence, and I have a lot of good evidence on a lot of subjects... I read constantly, several books going at all times... My interests a wide, but on some subjects I am very well read... I have a library that would likely make a lot of A2kers drool, and I have read most of the books in it... But I do not claim to know everything, and I am here as much to challenge my knowledge as to show it... The fact is that I have many interests, am uneducated in all of them, have only one year in college, thirty years of Ironwork and a pension to prove it, and 24 hours in my day... I take a great deal of pride in being able to fix anything in my house, to rebuild a transmission or engine or virtually any part of a car... I am no master of any trade... Even in Ironwork I was only day labor, a journeyman...

It seems to me, that the first place where we differed was on Napoleon, though, even here I may be wrong... The fact is that I just finished a book on Napoleon, and have read quite a few, and now own even more than I did on the subject... He is fascinating, and the time is interesting, but given the numbers of books on the subject, and one of my books is about the number of books on the subject, clearly I will not know all there is to know... If I knew a fraction of what I am now certain of, I would try to draw conclusion from it... That has always given my self education direction... It is in the willingness to prove myself wrong, or right in the conclusion I have drawn- that I have advanced...

I still see a contradiction in the constitution in that it sets forth clearly every good, but denies to the population the means of achieving those goals... Forms never improve upon the moment of their creation... Our government has went down hill as all governments go down hill... All marriages as forms go down hill... They never get better than the honeymoon... Those who framed the constitution could have taken more steps toward perfection, but those who owned the greater share of this land would not permit it, and bless their hearts, they thought there were sufficient safeguards for the limited democracy... They did no count on certain factors, and they could not foresee the future... If the interest had been democratic, and had remained so, then no one in government would have allowed the changes they soon pushed through, that benefitted them, and have hurt the nation...

Lincoln in his August 17th, 1885 debate with Douglas, referencing the Declaration of Independence, and the line about all men created equal, said: "Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men were entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that posterity might look up againt to the Declaration of Independence and take courage and renew the battle which their fathers began- so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane Christian virtues might not extinguished fromthe land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principals upon which the temple of liberty was being built"...
The declaration was revolutionary, and the constitution was reactionary... It put power back into the hands of the few who feared and hated the many...

If you continue to claim that there is a contradiction in the constitution, but are unable to post the texts from it which prove this, a simple enough task, then you haven't admitted to being wrong.

Stop talking to me, jackass.

Idiot.

By the way, i am bemused to learn that Lincoln was involved in a debate, more than 20 years after he died.

Idiot

I have not absorbed that.
My research (slight n cursory, as it was from Wikipedia) indicates that
the guns were sent to Federal arsenals, situate in the States.
In other words, from this material I surmise
that the guns never left Federal ownership and control
(i.e., the control of President Buchanan) until after Floyd left office.

See it excerpted n emfasized below:

"In March 1857, Floyd became Secretary of War in the cabinet of President James Buchanan. . . .
In December 1860, on ascertaining that Floyd had honored heavy drafts made by government contractors in anticipation of their earnings,
the president requested his resignation. Several days later Floyd was indicted for malversation in office, although the indictment was overruled in 1861 on technical grounds. There is no proof that he profited by these irregular transactions; in fact, he went out of the office financially embarrassed.
Although he had openly opposed secession before the election of Abraham Lincoln, his conduct after the election, especially after his breach with Buchanan, fell under suspicion, and he was accused in the press of having sent large stores of government arms to Federal arsenals in the South in the anticipation of the Civil War.


After his resignation, a congressional commission in the summer and fall of 1861 investigated Floyd's actions as Secretary of War. All of his records of orders and shipments of arms from 1859 to 1860 were examined. It is recorded that in response to John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry he bolstered the Federal arsenals in some Southern states by over 115,000 muskets and rifles in late 1859. He also ordered heavy ordnance to be shipped to the Federal forts in Galveston Harbor, Texas, and the new fort on Ship Island off the coast of Mississippi.






I don 't see it that way.
There r 3 branches of government.
Congress is not in charge of foreign policy.
The judiciary r not in charge of foreign policy.
The President IS in charge of foreign policy,
notwithstanding the fact that no treaty can go into effect
without a 2/3 ratification by the Senate, as u have correctly pointed out.





I read the link. I have not sought out its source,
but I 'm pretty sure that there 's something rotten in Denmark
or in Washington of the 186Os. Your link suggests that, after he was dead
and without a trial, the USSC issued an advisory opinion,
finding Floyd guilty of "corruption". I am skeptical.
In response to an inquiry from President George Washington,
his Chief Justice of the USSC, John Jay, said that the USSC
has no jd to issue advisory opinions.

The Case or Controversy Clause of Article III Section 2, subsection 1
requires that a case or controversy be brought be brawt b4 a federal court,
for the existence of jd. Muskrat v. US, 219 U.S. 346 (1911)

Ummm, Setanta, yoo whoo, pathfinder, you're on a public forum.

Only look at the goals compared to the organization and powers of our government... A bone was thrown to democracy in the form of the House of Representatives, which is still our most representative federal body.... And then ask yourself how the goals listed in the pramble could ever be reached while denying to the people the power to reach those goals on their own.... We are left with faith that rich people working for their benefit having power over the government through the most intractable institutions of the Supreme Court and Senate would in acting for their best interest also serve us.... That is the way those people thought: That what was good for General Motors, was good for America long before there was a General Motors, and they believe so today without evidence... They believed in providence and unseen hands... Their understanding of economy was faulty... But the fact was that they were promising the people, we the people of the United States one thing, while forever putting it out of the reach of the people by the most direct route... What Washington said: The the purpose of the Senate was to cool the democracy, is absolutely true, though stiffle, or frustrate would be more accurate, and this was before the extra-constitutional institutions of the parties cooled democracy ever further... There is a reason the rich have captured America and why we are slipping in this nation of wealth into a third world poverty... The rich have governed for their own perceived benefit, and the constitution made that possible... We were excluded from goverment as much as was possible... We do not have democracy, but the effective stalemate of democracy, and this is constitutional... The goals as stated are meaningless... The result as we have it, everything but the stated goals, were always the true goals...

If it were true that I was an idiot for mis-typing a date when I am doing you the honor of bothering with you at all, then I would still prefer to be an idiot to being the asssssshole you are...

Try to get the point, dummasss.... Lincoln got it, and he got it in the House divided speech, and in the Gettysurg Address, that our founding document, and our beacon of freedom is not in the Constitution of the United States which was always a bit of gauze over so much gangrene; but was the Declaration of Independence... You cannot govern for me, and I cannot govern for you better than we can each govern for ourselves with our own concerns before us... The Constitution set the rich of North and South in the saddle to ride this country amuck and they did so, and remain yet in control... And we are still a house divided....

So call me an idiot, if you want; but the inability to draw the most simple conclusions of the most obvious facts reveals a want of intelligence on your part, and not mine... To tell the truth, which you dare not do, I am uneducated, or at best, poorly educated; but I am not unintelligent or uncreative... You want insight, and in your jealous blindness you strike out at people... Poor you...

Don't do me any honors, ****-wit. Apparently, you're pretty goddamned dense. I don't want you to "bother" with me. I don't want you to ******* talk to me, pea-wit. Don't talk to me, don't quote my posts, don't have anything to do with me. That will end it all. You have no one to blame but yourself if this "bothers" you.

Whether you say something stupid or something I agree with, I will feel free to respond; and I will also try to give you all due respect, and I have always given you more than I think you deserve... Trust me on this point... I respect all people until they prove they deserve less... If I show respect to you, and I do respect that you know some stuff however useless it is to you for your want of insight; the respect I show you is to avoid the abuse of those who suffer at a distance all ill will expressed by humanity... What does it gain them if we make a show of our enmity??? They can only lose by it, and so they should not be subjected to it... It is not my pride in the pot here... I am hunting bigger game than you... If I disagree with you, or wish to add something to what you say, all I can say is that in the future I will try to respect you...

You are not an idiot.... You are worse than an idiot, but the word idiot, or even asshole does not capture your character... You are a learned individual without basic insight, and you find that fact frustrating... I find my ignorance of the facts to be frustrating as well... I am not blind to the facts... I know a lot, but the certainty that come of a faith is lost to me... I will never know enough to be certain... I already know enough to guess the rest... I will never know enough... We have so little time, so many books, and so much knowledge which is only a fraction of what a person may know -having the simple ability to think for their self and draw their own conclusions... What is your goal, and have you already surpassed it???