Is that what you do? Is that a some sort of Spastic warm up routine? No crunches or anything like that?
Constitution, I don't need no stinking constitution
- Thread starter Walter
- Start date
The American Constitution is full of amendments so what Obama is doing is OK. The original document allowed slavery
Amendments are made by approval of super majorities of congress and the states not by a single person. So, what the Bamster is trying to do is tyrannical.
I am of two minds on this issue.
First, it is clear to me that, at least according to the letter of the Constitution of the United States of America, that the President's actions were, on the face of them, improper and unconstitutional based on article II, section 2 of the Constitution. The fact is that the President is not a "supervisor" of the Houses of Congress, and does not have the authority to purport to "interpret" whether or not the Senate has recessed. It is either recessed, or it is not, and it cannot be recessed without the consent of the other House.
That being said, it is equally as clear to me that an advice-and-consent role cannot possibly be performed by the Senate while it is stuck in a series of pro forma sessions. It seems to me that to allow the House of Representatives to refuse to allow the Senate to recess, and for the Houses to then enter into pro forma sessions which, by their very nature, mean that no business is conducted, is an abuse of the Constitution. This provision is being abused by the House to prevent the use of an executive power that is rightfully vested in the Office of the President.
First, it is clear to me that, at least according to the letter of the Constitution of the United States of America, that the President's actions were, on the face of them, improper and unconstitutional based on article II, section 2 of the Constitution. The fact is that the President is not a "supervisor" of the Houses of Congress, and does not have the authority to purport to "interpret" whether or not the Senate has recessed. It is either recessed, or it is not, and it cannot be recessed without the consent of the other House.
That being said, it is equally as clear to me that an advice-and-consent role cannot possibly be performed by the Senate while it is stuck in a series of pro forma sessions. It seems to me that to allow the House of Representatives to refuse to allow the Senate to recess, and for the Houses to then enter into pro forma sessions which, by their very nature, mean that no business is conducted, is an abuse of the Constitution. This provision is being abused by the House to prevent the use of an executive power that is rightfully vested in the Office of the President.
PoliticalNick you got my point. He wasn't a tyrant he didn't do terrible things at home
he did them in Cuba. It is how they seperated forgeign and domestice policy. They
couldn't do it at home so they made it legal somewhere else.
Besides they are in a bigger problem now they used to send people to Syria to be
tortured but that is no longer an option. Remember the Caadian guy who spent time
in Syria shipped there from the States?
America is the land of contradictions, as long as the evil is done somewhere else there
is apparently no violation of the constitution. It is also the reason why they wonn't turn
over Amreican citizens to the international courts.
I am merely pointing out the foibles I didn't say they had to make sense. Undering the
reasoning use Bush was not a tyrant.
he did them in Cuba. It is how they seperated forgeign and domestice policy. They
couldn't do it at home so they made it legal somewhere else.
Besides they are in a bigger problem now they used to send people to Syria to be
tortured but that is no longer an option. Remember the Caadian guy who spent time
in Syria shipped there from the States?
America is the land of contradictions, as long as the evil is done somewhere else there
is apparently no violation of the constitution. It is also the reason why they wonn't turn
over Amreican citizens to the international courts.
I am merely pointing out the foibles I didn't say they had to make sense. Undering the
reasoning use Bush was not a tyrant.
And as the original WP article indicates, the Appellate Court's decision contradicts its past decisions.
U.S. Gun Rights Truly Are American Exceptionalism
By Zachary Elkins & Tom Ginsburg & James Melton Mar 7, 2013 5:30 PM CT
Our study of constitutions going back to 1789 shows that only a minority has ever included gun rights. What’s more, the number has dwindled, leaving a small and motley set of bedfellows.
Enlarge image
Enlarge image
For some, this lonely position is enough to suggest that the U.S. should rethink the current interpretation of the Second Amendment. For others, it is a reason to celebrate American exceptionalism.
Either way, the U.S. gun-rights debate raises intriguing questions about how other countries have addressed the issue in their constitutions. When were such rights predominant (if at all), which countries have had them, and how were these rights expressed?
Constitutions have been largely silent about such rights, and increasingly so. Twenty-four constitutions from nine countries have included gun rights in some form since 1789. Most of these constitutions date from the 1800s, and since World War II, no country has written a constitution with such a right without first having done so in the 19th century.
Truly Exceptional
This pattern reinforces the widely held notion that the right to bear arms is a vestige of a distant era. Constitutional customs tend to stick once they are enshrined, even when countries replace or revise their constitutions. While this inertia partly explains the American retention of the right to bear arms, it also shows how truly exceptional gun rights are: Countries that had the right have actively chosen to reject it in subsequent constitutions.
Constitutions with gun rights were reasonably well- represented in the late 1800s: 17 percent had the right in 1875. Since the early 1900s, however, the proportion has been less than 10 percent and falling. As new countries emerged in the interwar and post-World War II eras, their constitutions reflected a modern set of rights.
If arms were mentioned at all, it was to allow the government to regulate their use or to compel military service, not to provide a right to bear them. Today, only three out of nearly 200 constitutions contain a right to bear arms.
We have come to view constitutional rights like a one-way ratchet -- their popularity moves inexorably in only one direction, and that is up. The decline in popularity of the right to bear arms indicates that there is something very different about it, as opposed to other civil, political, social and economic rights. Most probably, the right invokes an anachronism, somewhat like the protection against “quartering soldiers” in the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or it invokes moral understandings of another era.
Which countries have had such rights historically? In the 19th century, they were mostly in the Americas, and that remains true. Given the strong influence of the U.S. constitutional text in the region, this pattern makes sense. Still, only eight of the 25 or so Latin American countries ever took on the right. The only non-Latin American country to do so was Liberia, a country founded by black Americans who used the U.S. Constitution as a model.
Countries such as Costa Rica briefly experimented with gun rights. Others, such as Colombia, maintained these rights for long spells before dropping them. Most, like Guatemala, have cycled back and forth between omission and inclusion. None has maintained the right continually throughout its constitutional history, which indicates a certain amount of ambivalence.
Right Rationale
For countries that include the right, how do they express it? The U.S., of course, justifies the right in terms of a “well-regulated militia,” but this is unusual. Most constitutions do not provide any sort of rationale, but there are some exceptions.
The Nicaraguan constitution, for example, was introduced in 1987 after left-leaning forces gained control. It provided Nicaraguans “the right to arm themselves in defense of their sovereignty, independence and revolutionary gains. It is the duty of the state to direct, organize and arm the people to guarantee this right.”
The U.S. constitution is alone in omitting any written conditions under which the government can regulate arms and munitions. In other countries, the right is typically limited to self-defense, either of the home or the state itself. Guatemala gives its citizens the right to own weapons for personal use in the home and states that citizens can only be forced to relinquish guns by judicial order. Haiti gives citizens the right to use guns to defend the home but explicitly denies a general right to bear arms.
Of course, U.S. courts have allowed some exceptions to unconditional gun ownership in the form of local, state and federal statutes restricting ownership or possession of firearms. In this way, the courts have served to render constitutional law somewhat less exceptional than the text itself would suggest.
Until 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court had never struck down a law aimed at regulating guns. That year, in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller and, two years later, McDonald v.Chicago, the court held that states could not restrict the ownership of handguns for self-defense. These rulings have made the U.S. even more exceptionally exceptional.
(Zachary Elkins is a professor of government at the University of Texas. Tom Ginsburg is a professor of international law at the University of Chicago Law School. James Melton is a lecturer in comparative politics at University College London. They run the National Science Foundation-funded Comparative Constitutions Project, which analyzes national constitutions since 1789. The opinions expressed are their own.)
To contact the writers of this article: Zachary Elkins at zelkins@austin.utexas.edu Tom Ginsburg at tginsburg@uchicago.edu James Melton at james.douglas.melton@gmail.com
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Paula Dwyer at pdwyer11@bloomberg.net.
By Zachary Elkins & Tom Ginsburg & James Melton Mar 7, 2013 5:30 PM CT
- Facebook Share
- Tweet
- Google +1
- 5 COMMENTS
- QUEUE
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-07/u-s-gun-rights-truly-are-american-exceptionalism.htmlQ
Our study of constitutions going back to 1789 shows that only a minority has ever included gun rights. What’s more, the number has dwindled, leaving a small and motley set of bedfellows.
Enlarge image
Enlarge image
For some, this lonely position is enough to suggest that the U.S. should rethink the current interpretation of the Second Amendment. For others, it is a reason to celebrate American exceptionalism.
Either way, the U.S. gun-rights debate raises intriguing questions about how other countries have addressed the issue in their constitutions. When were such rights predominant (if at all), which countries have had them, and how were these rights expressed?
Constitutions have been largely silent about such rights, and increasingly so. Twenty-four constitutions from nine countries have included gun rights in some form since 1789. Most of these constitutions date from the 1800s, and since World War II, no country has written a constitution with such a right without first having done so in the 19th century.
Truly Exceptional
This pattern reinforces the widely held notion that the right to bear arms is a vestige of a distant era. Constitutional customs tend to stick once they are enshrined, even when countries replace or revise their constitutions. While this inertia partly explains the American retention of the right to bear arms, it also shows how truly exceptional gun rights are: Countries that had the right have actively chosen to reject it in subsequent constitutions.
Constitutions with gun rights were reasonably well- represented in the late 1800s: 17 percent had the right in 1875. Since the early 1900s, however, the proportion has been less than 10 percent and falling. As new countries emerged in the interwar and post-World War II eras, their constitutions reflected a modern set of rights.
If arms were mentioned at all, it was to allow the government to regulate their use or to compel military service, not to provide a right to bear them. Today, only three out of nearly 200 constitutions contain a right to bear arms.
We have come to view constitutional rights like a one-way ratchet -- their popularity moves inexorably in only one direction, and that is up. The decline in popularity of the right to bear arms indicates that there is something very different about it, as opposed to other civil, political, social and economic rights. Most probably, the right invokes an anachronism, somewhat like the protection against “quartering soldiers” in the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or it invokes moral understandings of another era.
Which countries have had such rights historically? In the 19th century, they were mostly in the Americas, and that remains true. Given the strong influence of the U.S. constitutional text in the region, this pattern makes sense. Still, only eight of the 25 or so Latin American countries ever took on the right. The only non-Latin American country to do so was Liberia, a country founded by black Americans who used the U.S. Constitution as a model.
Countries such as Costa Rica briefly experimented with gun rights. Others, such as Colombia, maintained these rights for long spells before dropping them. Most, like Guatemala, have cycled back and forth between omission and inclusion. None has maintained the right continually throughout its constitutional history, which indicates a certain amount of ambivalence.
Right Rationale
For countries that include the right, how do they express it? The U.S., of course, justifies the right in terms of a “well-regulated militia,” but this is unusual. Most constitutions do not provide any sort of rationale, but there are some exceptions.
The Nicaraguan constitution, for example, was introduced in 1987 after left-leaning forces gained control. It provided Nicaraguans “the right to arm themselves in defense of their sovereignty, independence and revolutionary gains. It is the duty of the state to direct, organize and arm the people to guarantee this right.”
The U.S. constitution is alone in omitting any written conditions under which the government can regulate arms and munitions. In other countries, the right is typically limited to self-defense, either of the home or the state itself. Guatemala gives its citizens the right to own weapons for personal use in the home and states that citizens can only be forced to relinquish guns by judicial order. Haiti gives citizens the right to use guns to defend the home but explicitly denies a general right to bear arms.
Of course, U.S. courts have allowed some exceptions to unconditional gun ownership in the form of local, state and federal statutes restricting ownership or possession of firearms. In this way, the courts have served to render constitutional law somewhat less exceptional than the text itself would suggest.
Until 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court had never struck down a law aimed at regulating guns. That year, in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller and, two years later, McDonald v.Chicago, the court held that states could not restrict the ownership of handguns for self-defense. These rulings have made the U.S. even more exceptionally exceptional.
(Zachary Elkins is a professor of government at the University of Texas. Tom Ginsburg is a professor of international law at the University of Chicago Law School. James Melton is a lecturer in comparative politics at University College London. They run the National Science Foundation-funded Comparative Constitutions Project, which analyzes national constitutions since 1789. The opinions expressed are their own.)
To contact the writers of this article: Zachary Elkins at zelkins@austin.utexas.edu Tom Ginsburg at tginsburg@uchicago.edu James Melton at james.douglas.melton@gmail.com
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Paula Dwyer at pdwyer11@bloomberg.net.