Nor is it true, in the opinion of any court in U.S. history to date. Furthermore, only the 2nd, 4th, 9th and 10th amendments speak of “the people”; the others refer to “persons” or “the accused.”
All you need to do is get the 15 least populated states to agree that they will have no impact in electing the president and you’re golden.
Return to States Rights. Let the states have more autonomy over things like abortion and the drug war.
That’s a real nice take on things, DSYoung, but it’s nothing more than a bunch of hot air. It seems that you have ignored the substance of what I am saying. Just because an illegal alien might have certain protections extended to them by law, it does not make them rights. The very nature of your argument refutes itself. You go on and on about this or that right that has been extended by this or that law or court decision to cover illegal aliens, which proves my point completely. A right is something that is held by an individual by virtue of his or her being a citizen of the U.S. No further action is needed, rights are universal to citizens. The fact that illegals have had to have some of the protections that citizens enjoy a rights extended to them by law proves that they are not rights, but privileges. Rights are universal to any given group. A citizen of age has the RIGHT to keep and bear arms. An illegal alien of age does not. A citizen over 18 has the RIGHT to vote. An illegal alien does not. Your argument refutes itself. The fact that a citizen has the right not to be subject to illegal search and seizure and an illegal alien has a legal protection against search and seizure does not mean that the two are equivalent. Both citizen and illegal may have the same protection in practice, but the basis for that protection is very different between the two. Read the link provided by Captain Amazing, it’s very interesting, and it backs up what I am saying, with case citings.
Actually it is you who are doing exactly this, ignoring the clear meaning of the word AND it’s meaning as historically interpreted by the SCOUS the majority of the time, plus the basic concept of civil rights. Tell me then, using your world view, what exactly is the difference between an illegal alien and a citizen? AFAICT, you’re stating that there is none.
I would suggest that the number of Senators from a state be decided by state population. Take each state’s individual population and add them together. Then divide by 50 for an average. If a state has a population that is half the average or more they get 2 senators, if it is under the average they get 1.
I cannot understand why it is fair for some regions of the country with small numbers of people to carry as much weight as other regions with many times over that number with their greater diversity and complexity. Small states could still band together to protect their common interests as need be, still accounting for vast areas of our country.
Back onto the topic of the OP, I think one thing would be absolutely crucial to have is term limits for Congress, say 3 terms for Representatives and 2 for Senators.
I can only say that you need some to receive some education on the basic meanings of things like “rights.” You’re professed “right” to bear arms has no meaning if it could be infringed by the Congress; the Second Amendment precludes Congress from doing that. Similarly, the Fourteenth Amendment precludes the states from infringing upon the “right” of any person, alien or otherwise, legally present or otherwise, to due process and equal protection. There is nothing “extended” to them at all. They have this “right” as assuredly as you do.
And your assertion that an illegally present person does not have a “right” to bear arms is not tested. Indeed, it is doubtful that a law that specifically denied the right to own or posses “arms” to anyone illegally present in the country would pass muster before the Court. So you are presuming that which is not yet demonstrated in support of your argument.
I think you need to read the link provided by Captain Amazing a little more carefully. If you think that it means that people illegally present in this country have no “civil rights,” you haven’t read it carefully enough. You might also try actually reading the cases in question.
Do “citizens” have more “rights” than those who are not citizens? Assuredly. Citizens of this country have a “right” to vote in national elections, they have a “right” to move freely from state to state, they have a “right” to petition Congress for redress. There are others that have been suggested (e.g.: the right of habeas corpus, though this is hotly debated; see the current litigation over the internees at Gitmo). But the fact that your status as a citizen offers you even more guarantees than your status as a resident does not in any way obviate the fact that your status as a person provides you with certain rights, and that our Constitution protects those rights by precluding governmental action to infringe upon them.
As for the Supreme Court’s interpretation: I suggest you read the cases on the subject. When you can discourse on them, with appropriate citations, please come back. Until then, you are not helping your argument by incorrectly characterizing the Court’s decisions on the topic.
Why?
Actually, they couldn’t.
If the states of California, New York, Illinois, Florida and Pennsylvania ever agreed to anything, it would give them 32% (roughly) of the votes; this would require that opponents obtain the votes of 51/68ths of the remaining senators, or 75% of them, which would be substantially difficult.
The framers understood well the difficulties small states would face in a legislature based solely upon population. Those difficulties have only grown greater as the years have gone by.
Agreed, so long as they’re not lifetime limits. E.g., you can serve three terms and then you have to sit out one but you can come back two years later. That eliminates the incumbency-lock advantage without depriving us of an experienced class of career politicians. Every republic needs those. The “citizen legislator” ideal is a real bad idea.
Could I please have the case reference for your claim that all of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution are “rights as a person” rather than “rights as a citizen”? I really don’t understand what you are trying to argue here. Citizens have certain rights, enshrined in the Constitution. Illegal aliens have had some but not all of these same rights extended to them by law. The linked monograph you suggested I read more carefully is full of examples of instances where laws that would have been unconstitutional if they were directed towards citizens are deemed hunky dory by the SCOUS because they were directed at aliens. You seem to acknowledge this, yet you claim they are the same. Maybe I am misunderstanding your terminology. Voting is a civil right, no? If “Civil rights” are rights that everyone has by virtue of personhood, then why can’t illegals vote? They can’t because we are talking about 2 different things. Habeas corpus is a great example. Right now the debate is raging whether or not it applies to non citizens. The outcome is uncertain, but regardless of how it turns out, can you honestly say that the debate would even take place if the question was do citizens have the right of habeas corpus? Of course not. How do you explain this contradiction in your argument? Either civil rights apply to everyone, regardless of their status as citizens or they do not. Clearly, they do not. Therefore what illegal aliens enjoy are not civil rights, but something else. I never said that illegal aliens had no rights, I said they had no civil rights. You haven’t put a dent in that statement yet. Congress could pass a law tomorrow that it was OK to subject illegal aliens to cruel and unusual punishment. The SC could then review that law and, conceivably, uphold it (please note that I do not find this a likely scenario). Such an action, while outrageous, would not be inconsistent with previous rulings stating that aliens do not have the same set of rights as citizens. Congress could NOT pass a law saying that it was OK to subject citizens to cruel and unusual punishment. That is expressly against the Constitution, there is no way the SCOUS could uphold it, an amendment would have to be passed before citizens could suffer cruel and unusual punishment.
So we can end the drug war, and people will stop voting for President over an intractable issue. Let people move to the state that more represents their desires. If they want no abortions move to South Dakota. If they want to smoke a doob, come to Brooklyn’s hash bars.
I couldn’t disagree more strongly. What we need to do away with IS career politicians. 6 years in the HoR and 12 in the Senate is plenty of time for anyone, sarcasmif they haven’t managed to line their pockets with gold in that time, then they are incompetent and they don’t deserve any more./sarcasm The “citizen legislator” ideal is exactly what this country was founded on, why in the world do you think that they are a bad idea?
As I understand DSYoung’s post, it’s right there in the Constitution: when a right refers to “a person” or “the people,” it applies to everyone in the US. When it says “a citizen,” then it applies only to citizens. He’s certainly not saying that all of the rights in the Constitution apply to non-citizens: he lists three or four that don’t apply right at the beginning of the post you’re replying to. But when the 2nd Ammendment says, “The rights of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed,” I think you need to provide a cite that the framers didn’t consider non-Americans to be people before you can argue that right was intended only for citizens.
You seem to be basing your argument on the idea that, if people disagree about what rights exist, then those aren’t civil rights. I confess, I don’t understand the logic behind this assumption. Many of the things we now take for granted as civil rights were, at one time, hotly debated. I don’t see how that contradicts anything in DSYoung’s post.
With the exception of New Hampshire, that’s already true. Most states regularly vote for the same party for President every four years, and thus there’s no real need for anybody to campaign in them for the general election. When was the last time a nominee gave a shit about California’s issues over, or even on an equal base with, Ohio’s? The last time it was actually a swing state, that’s when.
USDOJ website good enough for you?
Underline mine of course. There is a right of “The People” that is not given to illegal aliens.
ETA grumble damn vB code screwup grumble
Items on my agenda:
- Explicitly acknowledge a right to privacy. The government should not be allowed to pry into a person’s body/home/etc. to criminalize activity that does not exceed those boundaries (this covers everything from consensual adult sex to growing/smoking pot in your house to abortion).
- Update many of the clauses to cover newer technologies so that their classification is not left up to judicial whim. For example, the second amendment (and a right to privacy) should guarantee unfettered private access to strong encryption. The fourth amendment should prohibit the unwarranted surveillance of network traffic. Etc.
- Related to both of those, I’d like to protect the right to anonymous speech. This is complex because of slander/libel, harassment, etc. However, I think anonymous speech/assembly are the ultimate in free expression and the government should be prevented from casually restricting it (e.g. by requiring ISPs to maintain logs).
- Abortion is such a fuzzy topic that it’s possible it needs explicit treatment. If so, I’d support a clause that prohibits government from forcing a woman to carry a child to term, perhaps with some wiggle room for a future system that might require healthy third trimester women to attempt delivery at a state-funded clinic before allowing third trimester abortion (i.e. if your baby can be delivered normally with minor complications, then the state covers that and puts the baby up for adoption… if it’s too risky, or if something goes wrong that would force you into a dangerous state, you get the abortion). I suppose this could be captured as “congress shall make no law requiring a woman to continue a healthy pregnancy for more than 2 days, or any pregnancy past the point where it becomes dangerous to her health and well-being.”
Move to Florida (which has term limits much in line with what you’ve proposed) and see how you feel about amateurs fucking around with government. No experience, no long term planning for infrastructure, no willingness to take on temporary pain for long-term gain, and little to no willingness to compromise. You want disfunctional government? Pass that amendment.
That is the one (currently relevant) portion of the Constitution that is specifically immune to amendment.
And this is different from career politicians running things how? Move to Maryland where the same party has been running things, with 2 short breaks, for 50 years. Guess what? We have all the exact same problems, and when they decide to pass the largest tax hike in history they have the process of calling an unnecessary emergency session, lying about the situation and pushing through a 20% tax increase in the middle of the night without oversight or input down cold. You’re blaming the nature of the beast on individual examples, give me incompetent amateurs over greedy professionals any day.