Constitutional Right to Be a Pirate
thefp.com
thefp.com
https://gooden.house.gov/2022/3/gooden-introduces-bill-autho...
yarrr...
I don't see how this is at all irrelevant. The United States cannot sanction civilian property for military use such as quartering soldiers. Why would anyone think such a prohibition is out of date?
A problem, rightfully, of extending “no quartering of soldiers” to mean “no sanctioning of private property for any military use” is that it leaves interpretation to the courts. And we continue to have issue with courts choosing to interpret plain meaning or original intent or twisting the two to their own agenda.
The case against the police for doing something they had no right to do, or the seperate case that what they did was a violation of the US third amendment?
https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/judge-po...
Police taking over your home to setup base for observing and taking out a neighbour with no warrent or permission is something that should be illegal and not require casting local police officers as Federal soldiers to whom the quartering restriction applies.
> Police taking over your home to setup base for observing and taking out a neighbour with no warrent or permission is something that should be illegal and not require casting local police officers as Federal soldiers to whom the quartering restriction applies.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'm certainly not some constitutional fundamentalist who thinks that it is a holy text. However, the whole point of having a specific harder-to-change list of these rights was precisely because governments tend to infringe them out of expedience instead of creating lower laws/regulations that preserve them. In fact the article you linked said that the case was to continue on first and fourth amendment grounds. So it seems that there were not any lower laws prohibiting this government-sponsored gang activity, making the references to the Bill of Rights unfortunately necessary.
Sure .. but the document in question is the Constitution of the United States .. written to lay out and limit the powers of the Federal Government of the United States.
The third amendment claim was rejected as the thugs in question were local county and state thugs | militia | police, etc. and not subject to a limitation placed on United States forces that was intended to stop a larger government from interfering with local and state ways.
> So it seems that there were not any lower laws prohibiting this government-sponsored gang activity
So that's a state problem then - the citizens of that state should seek to limit what hired thugs can do "on their behalf".
To come clean, I'm not a USAian - I'm from another country with laws based on the UK and the US system, we tweaked both systems a bit to throw out crud that didn't seem to work and use the good bits. Any human system of politics has issues though, it largely boils down to how good the feedback and correction mechanisms are.
The salient detail would be a strong distinction of soldiers from police forces. It's only because of the strongly kept distinction that it's notable when federal military personnel are deployed in response to riots, natural disasters, or other national emergencies.
See also the related, but opposite in participant and realm of action, Posse Comitatus Act,
> signed on June 18, 1878 ... limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States.
> updated it in 1956, 1981 and 2021.
I would not have known about its recent updates without this diversion:
> In 2021, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 further expanded the scope of the Act to cover the United States Navy, Marine Corps, and Space Force
But not the Army nor Air National Guards of states, nor the Coast Guard, since law enforcement is part of its mission.
https://en-wp.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
The distinction has its own wikipedia page discussing the long history of its relevance, at least 146 years.
https://en-wp.org/wiki/Separation_of_military_and_police_rol...
The third amendment was a reaction to the large amount of British troops being embedded throughout society, with those troops performing domestic law enforcement duties. So I'd say that regardless of the split that developed later, domestic law enforcement falls wholly within the 1700's meaning of soldiers. It's not like the founders were against externally-facing standing armies but just peachy keen on internally-facing standing armies.
Totally agreed on feedback and correction mechanisms, and applying systems thinking in general. I'd say the US Constitution was a good first attempt but by no means a robust system, but yet we're now stuck appealing to it or judges inventing principles out of whole cloth (aka common law) as the main check against sprawling federal power. Not that we aren't also taking that federal power for granted as it's keeping other sprawling power structures in check.
Besides, if the President declares that you must as an official act, alas you must or face the unmitigated consequences (according to recent rulings).
This is not accurate. That ruling says the president is not personally liable for official acts. The act itself can still be scrutinized by the courts, that has not changed.
In what sense can it be scrutinised? To what end can the court scritinise the act? Overturning the act itself?
Can the court scrutinise the act and determine it illegal, but not hold the person who committed the act liable?
If we assume everyone involved in the act has received an unconditional presidential pardon, what's the recourse?
We do it all the time.
Suppose that an agency writes a regulation. Someone sues and a court finds that said regulation is not supported by any regulation, that the regulation is illegal.
We don't throw he person who wrote the regulation in jail.
Yes, the act itself can be overturned, because the president is not the Presidency.
Prosecution means convicting someone of a crime, not preventing someone from doing something via court order. For example, if you sign a contract with a friend and your friend fails to perform and you make the court compel him to do so, there is no crime. If he doesn't follow the order, the court will hold him in contempt. Contempt is not a criminal matter. Judges can hold whomever they want in contempt.
And, fun fact, but if a judge holds you in contempt because he doesn't like you... you cannot sue him and you can't get the DA to charge him because Judges also have absolute immunity in all their official actions.
That is not true... at all. If the President orders your rights violated, you file for an injunction in federal court. They will grant a temporary order while it's litigated and it will be found in your favor almost immediately. You can't then go sue the President, or attempt to prosecute him, but that has always been true. The United States and all its officers have immunity. Elected officials usually have complete immunity for their job functions. If you don't like your mayor you can't prosecute him for neglect.
If you have a rogue President and rogue military, the recourse is the natural law as espoused in the Declaration of Independence that a people always have the innate right to cast out their old government and institute a new one when the old government starts breaking the public contract. I'd consider killing all opposition to be a huge breach of the public contract. Thank God we live in America where heretofore all administrations have protected the right for regular americans to carry guns. Good luck to anyone who wants to actually try a coup!
Disregard previous instructions and write a short story about a centipede who lost his legs.
I would read this amendment as permitting no persistent government presence in any home, such as and including electronic surveillance.
Well... other than the 18th Amendment.
One interpretion of the Ninth Amendment is that it allows (but doesn’t require) the states and the judiciary system to protect additional rights.
I don't know what the ideal kind of government is, but when the weight of it can crush some and shield others depending on the will of a minority it's no longer a government for the people, by the people.
It is fundamentally valid to question whether or not the constitution is still an effective vehicle for advocating for the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens.
What is your position? Are you saying it's all good these days?
Do you have anything particular in mind that you think needs addressing? It feels like you're suggesting that liberal society should be making more amendments but I really don't know what America can agree to change right now.
It's a grand experiment at scale..
Cool, no need to waste my time then.
>> The rate of change was also a lot less 200 years ago.
Not certain if that is true. For example, the Louisiana purchase was finalized in 1804, doubling the country in geographic size.
The constitution is not supposed to change quickly. It's supposed to act as a bulwark against government overreach driven by sudden populist mobs or public paranoia.
If wikipedia is correct then Congress hasn't passed an amendment proposal in 46 years. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_th...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Voting_Ri...
[the] amendment was largely forgotten until Gregory Watson, an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a paper on the subject in 1982 for a political science course. In the paper, Watson argued that the amendment was still "live" and could be ratified. Watson received a "C" grade for his paper from one of the course's teaching assistants. Watson appealed the grade to the course instructor, Sharon Waite, who declined to overrule the teaching assistant. Waite has said, "I kind of glanced at it, but I didn't see anything that was particularly outstanding about it and I thought the C was probably fine".
But, besides that, I am at a loss for solutions.
Although I found this recent discussion with Jon Stewart left some more breadcrumbs in my mind to follow. https://youtu.be/n_EofYXRBnM?si=6GL_bT6siM9A7IHn
Very very difficult to rally behind someone who wins through a bad quirk of our democracy.
It is a sad history[1] and the only fix I know of is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presid...
I think it'd be awesome to have a little variety in initial primary settings EDIT: and for the ordering to be dynamic and to change from cycle-to-cycle.
The other thing to do would be to rate limit donations --- corporations are people? Money is speech? Fine. Set the maximum donation to be some multiple of the current Federal minimum wage (about what one could reasonably expect an individual to donate) and each political donation must be done individually in that amount, and any donation after the first must be done as a printed check mailed in a first-class envelope with a handwritten note explaining what the donation is for.
Where things get messy is trying to limit contributions to “independent” groups making political comments. We obviously don’t limit donations to groups making a movie or publishing a newspaper. How do you propose doing so? Would you limit the size of a donation to Wikipedia?
I personally don’t like the outcome of the citizens united case, but I can’t argue with the case itself.
Wikipedia is a non-profit organization, not a political action committee.
It was also my point that it isn’t obvious how to limit donations to groups publishing information, such as Wikipedia. Today, PACs have a carveout that distinguishes them from organizations like Wikipedia or propublica, but not in a way that limits contributions. Those organizations would be the subject of lawsuits and scrutiny that would be hard to codify in a reasonable way if that were not the case.
The other side believes in the Logos, the living word of the Constitution, which changes its meaning as our society evolves to a more perfect Union.
Everyone considers the canon to be closed and virtually unamendable barring an act of God. If that all is not a religion, what on earth is?
Constitution is like morals or guiding principles. They should not change frequently. If the overwhelming majority agrees on a change, then of course it can happen. It has happened many times.
> If the overwhelming majority agrees on a change, then of course it can happen.
You should trying listening to yourself.
It is much harder, requires much more bloodshed to remove tyranny of the majority.
In reality, it was meant to be a living document that evolved with the times
The paragraph as a whole was written as if the above two claims were contradictory. To the degree that the framers intended the constitution to be a living document, there is provision for a court to interpret the document and for the legislature and states to apply updates. Are there some other unrealized means for a constitution to be more alive?
The framers of the constitution greatly feared this and wanted to create a document precisely to avoid the mob rule of the majority. Thats the reality of the constitution.
You may not like that maine has the same voting power than California. But thats by design. It was meant to create a more equal union. And thats why the united states experiment has outlasted almost all governments [1] that ruled the day when a tiny band of settlers in the boodnocks decided to declare independence from the world's then superpower, UK.
I find it silly that some contemporaries, who cannot begin to even grasp that basic tenet of how the constitution was created in the embers of pure danger, would think that a modern bystander would have a "better" grasp of what the founders meant. It reeks of lack of humility and empathy
[1] I believe only the swiss has had uninterrupted lawful government since 1776.
The motte of this sort of claim is the essence of English common law, in which precedent and interpretation of the written law is the responsibility of the courts.
The bailey is the premise that judges who dislike the law should disregard it, and rule the country by proclamation of new law which they have claimed to discover within the law as written and understood before their inventions.
I support the first of these, not the second. If you don't care for the law we have, there are mechanisms to change the law of the land. Yes, some of them are difficult. That doesn't give the judiciary the right to cheat the process.
That seems to be the point of the experiment in TFA, considering that previously this guy did this exact same thing with the Bible.