Kennedy Retires

[DieHardBrownsFan]

[calfoxwc]

7 hours ago, MLD Woody said:

So, as I was expecting, that was a lot of "liberals are bad! they all hate Trump! Activists!" etc etc etc nonsense. I guess I shouldn't be expecting you to look at it from a non partisan view. 

There is nothing that says amendments can't do away with previous ones. That has happened. There is nothing that says once something in place in the Constitution then it always will be. 

  So, as I was expecting, you went gay sassypants in your woodpecker reply.

   Just so it's out in the open - what I said still stands.

Your vague reference to a repeal of another amendment - refers to the only time that has happened.

The eighteenth - prohibition - was repealed by the 21st.

  Repealing the denial of a right does not relate in any way, not even in the partisan woodpecker warped feelings - to repealing

I.E., our 2nd Amendment. Our 2nd Amendment guarantees a permanent RIGHT to BEAR ARMS, and it SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

So, a guaranteed permanent right cannot be repealed. A denial of a right, which was prohibition, was undone. Meaning, the 18th Amendment was a moral/political/Constitutional mistake.

It had NOTHING to do with what you are being all girlybirdbrain about.

Go freaking learn something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-first_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

In State Board of Equalization v. Young's Market Co., the Supreme Court recognized that "Prior to the Twenty-first Amendment it would obviously have been unconstitutional"^[10] for a state to require a license and fee to import beer anywhere within its borders. First, the Court held that Section 2 abrogated the right to import intoxicating liquors free of a direct burden on interstate commerce, which otherwise would have been unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause before passage of the Twenty-first Amendment.^[11] In its second holding, the Court rejected an equal protection claim because "A classification recognized by the Twenty-first Amendment cannot be deemed forbidden by the Fourteenth."^[11] Over time, the Court has significantly curtailed this initial interpretation.

In Craig v. Boren (1976), the Supreme Court found that analysis under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment had not been affected by the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment. Although the Court did not specify whether the Twenty-first Amendment could provide an exception to any other constitutional protections outside of the Commerce Clause, it acknowledged "the relevance of the Twenty-first Amendment to other constitutional provisions becomes increasingly doubtful".

[calfoxwc]

from the same site:

" In 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island (1996), the Court held states cannot use the Twenty-first Amendment to abridge freedom of speech protections under the First Amendment.^[23] "

ergo, LIKE I SAID IN THE PAST - you cannot use the existence and action of the 21st Amendment, to undermine/abridge/repeal the 1st Amendment. Neither can you use it to undermine the 2nd Amendment.

The 21st repealed the 18th - because the 18th was a mistake - a denial of a right.

You can not repeal a permanent guaranteed RIGHT.

at least try to learn to THINK before you emotionally knee jerk chirp.

[MLD Woody]

Man, sometimes I forget how blindly hypocritical you are...

 

We 100% have methods for repealing amendments. There is nothing in the Constitution that says amendments CAN'T be repealed. We've done it once before and it's been proposed to repeal others. 

Read up in the court case you posted. It isn't saying at any point that an amendment can't ever be repealed. Their decision is stating that Rhode island was limiting the 1st amendment in their interpretation of the 21st. The court ruled the 21st couldn't overrule the 1st. At no point did they state amendments can't ever be repealed. 

And again, the original Constitution had no right to bear arms at the start. It was modified and added in. So was it wrong to modify it back then?

 

Feel free to respond with schoolyard insults and links you don't read. It really helps you look convincing....

[calfoxwc]

Your woodpecker retorts are so predictable.

  I just explained to you - the only time an amendment was repealed, it was repealed because

of the denial of freedom - to drink booze, etc, prohibition, was a mistake - and was actually

contrary to our Constutition.

  There is nothing about our 1st or 2nd Amendment that is a denial of anything - it is a permanent emphasis

on an absolute declared INALIENABLE RIGHT.

  Sure, you emotionally dream of an amendment getting rid of those you don't like, tough turkeys, birdbrain.

Learn a new word:

in·al·ien·a·ble

inˈālēənəb(ə)l/

adjective

adjective: inalienable

1. unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor.

   "freedom of religion, the most inalienable of all human rights"

   synonyms:

   inviolable, absolute, sacrosanct; More

 

The repeal of the 18th Amendment had NOTHING TO DO WITH AN INALIENABLE RIGHT.

  So, stick that in your beak and chirp on it for a while.

Attempting to repeal the 2nd Amendment is actually contrary to our Constitution - the 2nd Amendment declares

"...SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED"

Learn another word, woodypeckerhead:

in·fringe

inˈfrinj/

verb

past tense: infringed; past participle: infringed

1. actively break the terms of (a law, agreement, etc.).

   "making an unauthorized copy would infringe copyright"

   synonyms:

   contravene, violate, transgress, break, breach; More disobey, defy, flout, fly in the face of; disregard, ignore, neglect; go beyond, overstep, exceed; infract "the statute infringed constitutionally guaranteed rights"

   antonyms:

   obey, comply with

   • act so as to limit or undermine (something); encroach on.

     "his legal rights were being infringed"

     synonyms:

     restrict, limit, curb, check, encroach on; More

 

To try to repeal a permanent guarantee of our right to bear arms, is attempting to

infringe on those rights.

   None of this applies to the repeal of a ban on alcohol.

IN...YOUR....BEAK.

[MLD Woody]

More schoolyard inserts. More missing the point. More nonsense.

Cal, I'm not saying we should repeal any amendment. I'm saying we have the ability to do so. You seem to think we can't, which is factually incorrect.

You also keep glossing over the fact the Constitution was modified to include the bill of rights. And all of the other amendments. So you're fine with changing the Constitution then. But apparently it's perfect now and should never be changed? ... ok. I'm sure there were "conservatives" saying the same thing when we wanted to give women the right to vote. 

 

Again, the point is that the Constitution can be modified. Not easily. Not for politically gain. Not at the whim of a few. But through a long, majority needing process that will update it to the times. Our founding fathers understood Sheet changes over hundreds of years. 

[Westside Steve]

16 minutes ago, MLD Woody said:

More schoolyard inserts. More missing the point. More nonsense.

Cal, I'm not saying we should repeal any amendment. I'm saying we have the ability to do so. You seem to think we can't, which is factually incorrect.

You also keep glossing over the fact the Constitution was modified to include the bill of rights. And all of the other amendments. So you're fine with changing the Constitution then. But apparently it's perfect now and should never be changed? ... ok. I'm sure there were "conservatives" saying the same thing when we wanted to give women the right to vote. 

 

Again, the point is that the Constitution can be modified. Not easily. Not for politically gain. Not at the whim of a few. But through a long, majority needing process that will update it to the times. Our founding fathers understood Sheet changes over hundreds of years. 

You are mostly correct except when we get to the end. It most certainly can be changed on a whim or for political expediency. You only need 5 out of 9 members to declare or something constitutional or unconstitutional.

I have no doubt the founding fathers set this up so that the great unwashed had no real power.

As far as the founding fathers hasn't the point been made a few times before but they had no idea what the world would be like today? And if that's the case how is their wisdom worth anything?

WSS

[MLD Woody]

48 minutes ago, Westside Steve said:

You are mostly correct except when we get to the end. It most certainly can be changed on a whim or for political expediency. You only need 5 out of 9 members to declare or something constitutional or unconstitutional.

I have no doubt the founding fathers set this up so that the great unwashed had no real power.

As far as the founding fathers hasn't the point been made a few times before but they had no idea what the world would be like today? And if that's the case how is their wisdom worth anything?

WSS

Declaring something Constitutional or unconstitutional isn't the same as modifying the Constitution. That's a much more involved process. 

 

It's their wisdom in that they knew the world would change. I don't think they expected 1776 society to match 2076 society. You plan for this by providing a means to update that document over time. Which we have done in the past but apparently shouldn't ever do again for some reason.

[Westside Steve]

34 minutes ago, MLD Woody said:

Declaring something Constitutional or unconstitutional isn't the same as modifying the Constitution. That's a much more involved process. 

 

It's their wisdom in that they knew the world would change. I don't think they expected 1776 society to match 2076 society. You plan for this by providing a means to update that document over time. Which we have done in the past but apparently shouldn't ever do again for some reason.

I will refrain from any woodpecker esque names but I think you're naive if you think declaring something on constitutional, or constitutional for that matter, doesn't have the ability to drastically change the Constitution. No doubt we could find of hypothetical examples hunt both sides. 

WSS

[calfoxwc]

1 hour ago, MLD Woody said:

More schoolyard inserts. More missing the point. More nonsense.

Cal, I'm not saying we should repeal any amendment. I'm saying we have the ability to do so. You seem to think we can't, which is factually incorrect.

You also keep glossing over the fact the Constitution was modified to include the bill of rights. And all of the other amendments. So you're fine with changing the Constitution then. But apparently it's perfect now and should never be changed? ... ok. I'm sure there were "conservatives" saying the same thing when we wanted to give women the right to vote. 

 

Again, the point is that the Constitution can be modified. Not easily. Not for politically gain. Not at the whim of a few. But through a long, majority needing process that will update it to the times. Our founding fathers understood Sheet changes over hundreds of years. 

Well, I'll give you credit here for a good reply. But you are totally offbase. Of course we have the ability to repeal an amendment - hell, it WAS done once. So you don't have a point there. However, you keep ignoring the fact, that the repeal was to end prohibition.

  My argument is, you can't repeal the 1st/2nd/etc Amendments because they were NOT mistakes - they are guaranteed, emphasized Constitutional RIGHTS. Inalienable.

  I'm not glossing over anything at all. It isn't so much changing the Constitution, it is stipulating with profound emphasis,

extremely important specific in alienable RIGHTS, and other amendments. You cannot repeal a RIGHT, or the Constitution could be

completely overridden, relegated to nothing, by a tyrannical government that takes over and dominates the American people.

The Founders lived under that tyranny - that is the whole point - to legally emphasize rights and what gov can NOT do, to prevent tyranny from ever happening to the American free people.

Our Founding Fathers never once figured to allow our Constitution to be overridden, modified according to the changing of times.

  Free speech, freedom of religion, our 2nd Amendment - those are inalienable rights that can never be taken away. They are permanent.

The Founding Fathers were about permanent RIGHTS and FREEDOMS. Why you think they would be fine with the

taking away freedoms and RIGHTS from the American people... is just ignorance and emotional knee jerk.

There is great reason why a God given, Founding Fathers-emphasized INALIENABLE RIGHT cannot be simply taken away because a bunch of other people don't like that RIGHT.

   Sure, you can repeal an Amendment, and you can add an Amendment.

You can NOT repeal a permanent RIGHT, make no mistake about it.

RIGHTS are CONCRETE.  

When the Founding Fathers said "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED"...they didn't say for a couple of decades til some yuppies decide it was now okay to infringe. That was PERMANENT.

 

[calfoxwc]

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/03/30/you_can_try_to_repeal_the_second_amendment_but_you_cant_repeal_history_136666.html

The debate over the Second Amendment centered on a dispute over who should control the militia: the federal or state governments. Everyone understood that a militia consisted of free individuals who would almost always grab their own firearms -- the ones they used in their everyday existence -- to engage in concerted efforts to protect themselves, their community or their country (sometimes from their own government).

This might surprise some, but the Minute Men did not return their muskets after Lexington.

 

In the writings and speeches of the American founders, the threat of disarmament was always a casus belli, which makes sense for practical and ideological reasons. None of the natural rights codified in the Constitution -- none, not freedom of speech, press or religion, or the ability to vote or demand due process -- had a longer or deeper history in English common law and tradition than the right to defend oneself.

Guns were so prevalent, in fact, that some framers noted that a tyrant would never take the nation because the general public out-armed the state. Noah Webster reasoned: "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops ..." His only mistake was trusting that the whole body of the people would always uphold the Constitution.

Even during the 19th century, not a single case challenged the notion that the Second Amendment is anything but an individual right. Again, it was so self-evident that when it was brought, it was merely a way to juxtapose American liberty with tyranny elsewhere. In 1823, in a letter to John Adams, William H. Sumner noted that if the population of the United States were "like that of Europe, chiefly consisted of an unarmed peasantry," it would be conquerable. "Here," he went on, "every house is a castle, and every man a soldier." Adams, who had argued that self-defense was "the primary canon of the law of nature" when defending British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, concurred that an armed citizenry would not be susceptible to despotism.

When Jacob Howard, the Michigan senator who helped introduce the 14th Amendment to (attempt) to ensure that blacks in the South had protected Constitutional rights, he specifically noted "the right to bear arms" as a right to insure. The right to self-defense surely terrified the racists of the South more than the other.

 

The collective theory is modern invention. Even the photo of a musket and an AR-15 juxtaposed above Stevens' column to illustrate the antiquatedness of gun rights in the modern age misjudges history. Just as the First Amendment protects modern communication, and just as the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends to guns that were not in existence at the time of the founding. Unlike contemporary liberal columnists who'd like to revise the Constitution, the founders were well aware that the fleeting emotions of the population could corrode rights.

[MLD Woody]

So that droned on there, but I'll say this

1) I'm not saying you should repeal the first amendment. I'm saying that it could technically be done. And it could. You saying it can't is false. This all ties back to saying it could be modified, you saying no, and then walking back.

2) You're saying all of the previous changes to the Constitution were ok (and yes, the 2nd amendment was a change, by definition), but now it can't be? Why is it perfect now? 

3) Not a couple of decades. A couple of centuries. A little different. Also, you can't refer to the amendment itself to prove it can't be repealed, since the whole point is repealing it, which you've already said can be done. 

[Westside Steve]

1 hour ago, MLD Woody said:

So that droned on there, but I'll say this

1) I'm not saying you should repeal the first amendment. I'm saying that it could technically be done. And it could. You saying it can't is false. This all ties back to saying it could be modified, you saying no, and then walking back.

2) You're saying all of the previous changes to the Constitution were ok (and yes, the 2nd amendment was a change, by definition), but now it can't be? Why is it perfect now? 

3) Not a couple of decades. A couple of centuries. A little different. Also, you can't refer to the amendment itself to prove it can't be repealed, since the whole point is repealing it, which you've already said can be done. 

Woody are there any amendments you think stand today as they did when they were written, if so which ones. Are there any amendments you believe we could live without?

Amendments as in the Bill of Rights? 

Of course my second point would be that some of these so-called unalienable rights have been watered down so far right now as to be meaningless or at least completely divorced from their original intent. So there's that.

WSS

[calfoxwc]

Changes can be made, you can not delete a RIGHT out of our Constitution, or that means those rights were granted by

the government.

No, they are God given rights, inalienable.

Inalienable.

Should I keep reposting it til you learn the definition, Woody?

[jbluhm86]

10 hours ago, Westside Steve said:

You are mostly correct except when we get to the end. It most certainly can be changed on a whim or for political expediency. You only need 5 out of 9 members to declare or something constitutional or unconstitutional...

How can the Constitution be used to declare something within the Constitution to be unconstitutional? That's a bit paradoxical...

[Westside Steve]

7 minutes ago, jbluhm86 said:

How can the Constitution be used to declare something within the Constitution to be unconstitutional? That's a bit paradoxical...

Shouldn't be that tough to understand. Unless you just don't want to. Or you're trying to make some point...

WSS

[calfoxwc]

On 7/11/2018 at 9:56 PM, jbluhm86 said:

How can the Constitution be used to declare something within the Constitution to be unconstitutional? That's a bit paradoxical...

That is a fair question. It isn't a matter of cart before horse - it's a matter of historical precedent.

We have the Federation Papers to give us historical reference in detail, what the Founders intended

in the Constitution.

   In short, when TRUTH is established, and has led to the thriving and growth of our country into the most dynamic country on the planet - when you add something that doesn't fit, like the 18th Amendment, or...obamaocare mandates as an amendment, that mistake can be historically analyzed in terms of said history, and the preceding rest of the Constitution.

What tyranny and freedom are, does not change. The Founding Fathers put genius thought into our Constitution to secure our freedom from tyranny, forever. Historically, the RIGHTS outlined are from their own experience with tyranny. And they cannot be arbitrarily edited away.