Re: avoiding and evading
Debra_Law wrote:
Did you forget about your criticism of the Kelo case . . . the subject matter of this thread?
No! Have you? Have you forgotten the specific words I wrote?
Debra_Law wrote:
You posted criticism of the Kelo case, didn't you? You identified the Supreme Court as a public enemy, didn't you?
Yes. Can’t you read? I thought I was very clear in what I wrote.
Debra_Law wrote:
You know exactly what my objections are to your criticism. It centers on your hypocrisy. I specifically set forth your prior inconsistent stance on the Fourteenth Amendment that makes your current criticism of the Supreme Court a farce.
What hypocrisy? Support your charge. Post my previous words and the words in this thread which support your claim. Or is you charge based upon one of your erroneous presumptions about what is in my mind, or what you falsely assert is in my mind? Explain. What inconsistent stance? Explain. Quote my specific words and then explain.
Debra_Law wrote:
If we confine Fourteenth Amendment construction and jurisprudence in the manner that you demand in accordance with the framers' intent as you proclaim that intent to be, then the Fifth Amendment would only apply to federal action and the Supreme Court would not have jurisdiction to even hear the Kelo case.
Ah! You are finally beginning to wake up! The fact is, as the case was presented, there was no federal question, but, the SCOTUS decided to not only take the case, but the majority opinion used its position of power to side with one of the litigants!
Justice O'Connor sums up part of the tyranny of the majority opinion in the following words:
Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power. Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded--i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public--in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings "for public use" is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property--and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Accordingly I respectfully dissent.[/i]
Debra_Law wrote:
Unless you first acknowledge that your previous claims concerning the Fourteenth Amendment were flawed in order to make the Fifth Amendment's taking clause applicable to the States via the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . then you have NO BEEF with the Supreme Court.
Your fuzzy thinking is showing again. No one on this end has ever suggested the Fifth Amendment was intended to be applied to state action.
Debra_Law wrote:In order to criticize the Supreme Court for failing to apply the Fifth Amendment's taking clause appropriately to STATE action . . . you must first acknowledge that the Supreme Court had jurisdiction over the case. This is something you can't do unless you retract your former stance on the Fourteenth Amendment.
Now why would I want to apply the Fifth Amendment to state action and allow the feds to interfere in state action and undermine federalism? I will say, however, that If a state passed legislation designed to take property based upon race, color or previous condition of slavery, then, and only then, would their be a federal question involved, but it would be involved via the intent of the 14th Amendment, not the Fifth. Are you beginning to learn now?
Debra_Law wrote:You painted yourself into a corner, and you don't want to address your inconsistent construction of the Fourteenth Amendment because that would require substantial backtracking and double talk. I understand your desire to avoid my post, but at least be honest. Don't pretend that my post didn't make sense. You know what I'm talking about.
No Debra. Your post only makes sense if you assume what is in my mind. The problem here is that you assume to know what is in my mind and then make statements inconsistent with what my real views are.
Debra_Law wrote:You and Brandon can commiserate all you want--but I do believe if a subject is important enough to discuss--especially a subject as important as the United States Constitution--then people should make an effort to know what they're talking about.
Indeed, you really do need to start knowing what you are talking about and not make assumptions about what others may have in their minds. In addition, I suggest you study the intent of our constitution as contemplated by those who framed it and the people who adopted it. Here are some of the sources used to find the Constitution’s “intent” as contemplated by those who framed it and the people who adopted it: the historical records leading up to the Constitutional Convention of 1787; Madison’s Notes on the Convention, including the Convention Notes of Hamilton, Paterson, James McHenry, etc.; Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers; and, Elliot’s debates, which contain the State Ratification debates. Together, these records allow one to document, not “interpret” from the framers and ratifiers own words, that which they intended by their words.
"In construing the Constitution we are compelled to give it such interpretation as will secure the result intended to be accomplished by those who framed it and the people who adopted it...A construction which would give the phrase...a meaning differing from the sense in which it was understood and employed by the people when they adopted the Constitution, would be as unconstitutional as a departure from the plain and express language of the Constitution."[/i]Senate Report No. 21, 42nd Cong. 2d Session 2 (1872), reprinted in Alfred Avins, The Reconstruction Amendments’ Debates 571 (1967),
Debra_Law wrote:A true constitutional scholar would never be satisfied at resting his so-called expertise on the laurels of "original intent" based on selected writings and a few quotations from the founding fathers. Why don't you stretch and expand your knowledge base? Start with Fourteenth Amendment construction and jurisprudence.
Sorry my dear, but to abandon the most fundamental rule of constitutional law, which is to carry out the intent of our constitutions, state and federal, as contemplated by those who framed and ratified them, would be the first step in perpetrating a fraud upon the people.
As Justice Story correctly declares [see1084 of his com.]
"If the Constitution was ratified under the belief, sedulously propagated on all sides, that such protection was afforded, would it not now be a fraud upon the whole people to give a different construction to its powers?" [/i]
Debra_Law wrote:
Again, until you revise your stance on the Fourteenth Amendment, you have no gripe with the Supreme Court.
Only in your presumptuous and disjointed way of thinking, which assumes to know what is in my mind.
JWK
ACRS
"On every question of construction [of the Constitution], let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." --[/i]Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322.
