Today, December 15, is Bill of Rights day. Let’s examine the amendments:
- Free speech – FCC, libel laws
- Bear arms – federal regulation on guns
- No quartering – maybe the only one being followed
- No unreasonable search – “PATRIOT” Act
- Due process – “PATRIOT” Act again
- Speedy trial – Gitmo
- Civil trial by jury – Gitmo
- No cruel punishment – Gitmo
- Rights not enumerated – most laws violate this
- Powers of States and people – ditto
Happy Bill of Rights Day!
I’ve been entertained for years with the fact that most federal laws have violated the last 2 amendments for the last hundred years but government doesn’t have the integrity to amend it.
1. TOTALLY free speech. Yell “fire” in a movie theater. Anything you want.
2. Bear arms. Personal nukes, for instance. What could the harm be in that?
3. I’ll put you up for $500/day…
4. No unreasonable search. Unless you’re holding.
5. Due Process. Give the devil his due.
6. Speedy trial. FOR CITIZENS!
7. Civil trial by jury. Operative word “Civil” which has nothing to do with combatants collected off a battle field.
8. No cruel punishment. Waterboard this!
9. WTF
10. Ditto
Honest to the gods, Cherman, you’re a piece of work.
Christians fought the “No quartering” amendment but gave in when they saw it had nothing to do with torture.
#3 Ba-dum-bump!
He’ll be here all week folks, try the veal and don’t forget to tip your waitress!
🙂
Hey,
The Bill of Rights only apply to US Citizens. So Obama’s people in Gitmo are not entitled to the rights our first Muslim President has extended to them via the Attorney General whose law firm represented terrorists. They also are not entitled to the protection of the 8th Amendment. Good luck with that. As far as no cruel punishment, this one is OVERLY done. The 9th Amendment is the one which may prove quite helpful to citizens unless Obama eliminates it, which in practice, every administration does. It says that powers not delegated to the Federal Government are reserved for the states.
#2, if you don’t like the Constitution, you gotta ammend it, not ignore it.
Sad to see all the “gitmo” and “patriot act” labels up there…
Thanks for supporting the man who trashed our bill of rights, wingnuts. Why do you hate America so much?
#5 lol Faxon, you’re a real piece of sh^H^H art. The wingnut in full bloom. 🙂
James Madison, from his Report on the Virginia Resolutions, which criticized the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798:
“Again, it is said, that aliens not being parties to the Constitution, the rights and privileges which it secures cannot be at all claimed by them.
To this reasoning, also, it might be answered, that although aliens are not parties to the Constitution, it does not follow that the Constitution has vested in Congress an absolute power over them. The parties to the Constitution may have granted, or retained, or modified the power over aliens, without regard to that particular consideration.
But a more direct reply is, that it does not follow, because aliens are not parties to the Constitution, as citizens are parties to it, that whilst they actually conform to it, they have no right to its protection. Aliens are not more parties to the laws, than they are parties to the Constitution; yet, it will not be disputed, that as they owe, on one hand, a temporary obedience, they are entitled in return to their protection and advantage.
If aliens had no rights under the Constitution, they might not only be banished, but even capitally punished, without a jury or the other incidents to a fair trial. But so far has a contrary principle been carried, in every part of the United States, that except on charges of treason, an alien has, besides all the common privileges, the special one of being tried by a jury, of which one-half may be also aliens.”
What’s really freaky is how much more extreme the British are, both now and historically.
Imagine a regime that was TOO structured for the Puritans. Yikes.
They ran concentration camps in Kenya with extreme brutality *after* WWII.
The British surveillance state is much more intrusive than ours.
But what’s really, really freaky is how both parties in the US are perfectly happy for us to catch up with our cousins.
@#9 As interpreted by Supreme Court, aliens on American soil indeed have all those rights. Not aliens anywhere in the World.
“# Speedy trial – Gitmo (what about WWII interment camps?)
# Civil trial by jury – Gitmo (what about WWII German spies arrested ON AMERICAN SOIL yet tried by Military commission?)
# No cruel punishment – Gitmo (what about WWII hangings of White Wolf terrorists in occupied Germany when captured, without trial or thousands of Japanese proper military soldiers tortured for information followed by throat slashing en-mass on Okinawa? [ignoring even Geneva Convention that applied to them vs. the terrorists of Gitmo fame]”
Stop being obsessed with Gitmo and Bush, learn the history …
Amendments 6, 7, and 8 were never meant to apply to prisoners of war. The current administration is changing that now so he will set a precedent.
6, Cherman, the Liberals prefer to say the Constitution is a living breathing document so the need for amending has diminished. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Liberals find the Constitution to eventually be unconstitutional.
Nice try Faxon. The rights are not granted by the bill, but are simply enumerated there. All men are endowed with these rights, not just the ones that are politically convenient.
No guyver, we were very careful not to call any recent captures POWs. That would mean we would have to follow humanitarian rules for their care and treatment.
I’m so glad we could lawyer our way out of our principles so we could be technically correct. That’s the best kind of correct you know.
I have 3 pistols and a permit… What more do we need? Oh yeah, rednecks want fully automatic guns. You know, just in case.
14, The military has followed the Geneva convention. The only things that were “unhumanitarian” in the eyes of Liberals was water-boarding and prisoners in humiliating poses.
The Congress knew about the humiliation that the prisoners were going through but nothing came of it until actual pictures were leaked.
Regardless, those we fight do far worse to our troops than the mild things we do to our prisoners.
So if water-boarding and humiliating poses are not acceptable what about sleep deprivation? What about only offering them pork-based foods? Would that be considered inhumane? Or would those be measures used to break their will?
The Liberals would call it torture. Somehow decapitation, maiming, and mutilation are morally equivalent to humiliating poses and water-boarding which induces fear.
#15
“I have 3 pistols and a permit… What more do we need?”
Long gun
Way to live down to the moral decrepitude of our enemies Guyver.
Ah for the good old days when the Bill of Rights first came into effect and the dream was realized.
RBG
18, TCC3, hardly living down to their standards. Just making clear that the differences are not ambiguous.
#20–Guyver==you make a critical, probably rhetorical error==you do equate everything past one point on a continuum with everything else past that point.
History and society have “decided” that waterboarding is torture. Agree or not it is debateable and is very near that line between acceptable/not acceptable. THAT does not mean it is the same a beheading or maiming or that any equivalency is warranted.
Most “issues” fall on such continuums and most idiots make the same error you demonstrate.
The constitution protects only the citizens and residents of the US, not non-uniformed foreign soldiers.
Additionally, there are no constitution or treaty “Geneva Convention” rights for soldiers who do not wear uniforms or recognized insignia and the convention allows for the execution of the combatants out of uniform.
So much for Gitmo.
#22 Sigh… this has been rehashed countless times. One more time: And what if they’re not soldiers of any recognized army?
Look, the Republicans put their prisoners in Gitmo for a reason: they knew they were on shaky legal ground if they abused the prisoners On American Soil, so they kept them in Gitmo which is technically not American soil, but since we have complete control over it, it effectively is. So there you have it, torturing on a technicality.
Gitmo is a PITA and shouldn’t have occurred. 1. Declare them POW’s (can’t toruture), or
2. illegal combatants since they don’t wear uniforms per Geneva Convention.
Either one can be held indefinitely. Under 2, they can be executed without trial as mentioned about the German saboteurs above. This is GW’s biggest screwup- not declaring a combat status of these people. Oh yeah- and torturing them.
21, Bobbo, The conclusion you speak of is your opinion and you’re certainly entitled to it. But there is not a consensus as you’re implying amongst society. That’s liberal spin.
If instilling the fear of death is too harsh of an interrogation method, then what do you propose as a friendlier interrogation method that POWs and Liberals (what you refer to as society) would prefer to employ? Certainly there’s got to be some interrogation method within this continuum you speak of that all of society, history, and POWs will mutually find agreeable? 🙂
23, Phydeau, the policy of interrogating POWs not on American soil has been going on for a very long time. You’re either ignorant of this or a partisan hack that believes only the Bush Administration is culpable of doing such a thing.
The “recognized army” you speak of are Al Qaeda and the Taliban. What’s your point? That just because they’re an armed force not officially supported by a particular country that they cannot be considered an “army”?
#26 With Gitmo it was much larger and institutionalized.
Re the army, my point is they’re not enemy soldiers “out of uniform” because there is no uniform, they’re not soldiers of any country. So we can’t execute them as “spies” as RSweeney was claiming.
27, Bush’s biggest SNAFU was to grand stand what progress he made and put too much into the public eye so that his political opponents could find some mole hill to make a mountain out of or to use carefully chosen sound bites to pull a Michael Moore on him.
The Taliban & Al Qaeda pretty much fit all the requirements of “enemy soldiers” with the exception of national sponsorship. They’re clearly organized, overtly armed, and hostile towards killing us. Remember the South Korean Christians who went to Afghanistan to spread peace?
Sounds like if your wearing a uniform technicality had any merit, you would then excuse a lot of our undercover Spec Ops as being in the armed forces since many of them look like Taliban & Al Qaeda. Are you implying someone from Delta Force isn’t actually a soldier?
#28 The definition of “enemy soldiers” requires an enemy nation. al-Qaeda is a non-national terrorist group. They’re terrorists, and they should be treated like criminals.
And regarding interrogation, there’s plenty of evidence out there that treating prisoners kindly gets more information that treating them harshly. That just seems to escape you wingnuts somehow. Torture is despicable; it puts us in league with the Soviets, the Chinese, the Nazis, and all manner of nasty company. Saint Ronnie signed a treaty in 1984 banning torture, at the height of the Cold War. Torture wasn’t useful then, it’s not useful now.
#29, If the definition of “enemy soldier” requires a nation, then are they civilians?
Because if they are, according to the fourth Geneva Convention and the two Additional Protocols, Civilians are not to be subject to attack. This includes direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks against areas in which civilians are present.
Although the definition of terrorist is well understood, the question becomes, “is a terrorist considered a civilian?”