Obame re: guns" "I am constrained by a system that the Founders put in place"

[legaleagle_45]

Court rulings the US Constitution protecting slavery: American slave court cases

You did not carefully examine the cases contained in your link, huh?

 

[M14 Shooter]

obama: ?i am constrained by a system that our founders put in place? « cbs dc
thank god for that.

Did it ever occur to the incompetent-in-chief, or any of his useful idiot supporters, that the constitution was created for very purpose of keeping the government from running roughshod over the rights of the people?

Must realy suck for him, not being able to dictate his agenda.

View attachment 25235

Seems pretty self-expanatory to me - How can I help you understand what you do not understand?

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The protections were the same for any property owners, as state law declared the slaves chattel, and thus property, not slaves in the classic roman sense, which was more of a social class.

The fugtive slave clause did not protect slavery in and of itself, what it was there for was to prevent any other state from saying "if you reach here, you are free" It tied the slave status to the originating state.

Federal law trumped state law, so state rulings that relied on state law could not super-cede federal law. Negroes/Blacks as a class were not automatically slaves.

you started out with "The inital constitution did not really protect slavery, it tolerated it and took it into account with respects to representative count." and I replied that it looked like you were arguing a distinction with a difference, but the US Constitution protected slavery. All the US Supreme Court cases until the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery, said so. None of the court cases in the states or territories had the power to change that. It took an amendment abolishing slavery.

Why does it feel like we are arguing the difference between the colors fire engine red and cherry red?

Because early on you posted what looked like a distinction with a difference. If I say the US Constitution protected slavery, and somebody comes back with 'not in all state' or 'not really' it is assumed they knew the original claim that "the US Constitution protected slavery" is not refuted by adding 'not in all state' or 'not really'.

Stating "the US Constitution protected slavery" is simply stating a fact.

 

[legaleagle_45]

Joins in on an invalid argument. The USMB House, Legal Eagle Strikes Again!

Lawyers who actually practice in front of SCOTUS refer to it as "the rule of 5", Dante... and we strive always to find that 5th vote and address the bulk of our argument to persuade them. In Heller the two which were subject to the most persuasion were Kennedy and Ginsburg.

You may consider it invalid, and in a perfect world you would be right. However we do not live in a perfect world.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Has it ever occurred to morons like you that the even many of the people who ratified the US Constitution admitted the Constitution is a flawed document?

The Southern states used the Constitution to keep the government from running roughshod over the rights of the people to own and trade in Slavery?

Has it ever occurred to you that The Founders put a process in place to amend or fix The Constitution? Perhaps you think that is flawed and are comfortable with having an individual or select few changing or usurp the process? Please tell us how that process is not as flawed?

Of course. Nope. Everything in life is flawed including life. Acknowledging this truism allows people with small minds to move on up the food chain

 

[IlarMeilyr]

Has it ever occurred to morons like you that the even many of the people who ratified the US Constitution admitted the Constitution is a flawed document?

The Southern states used the Constitution to keep the government from running roughshod over the rights of the people to own and trade in Slavery?

Has it ever occurred to you that The Founders put a process in place to amend or fix The Constitution? Perhaps you think that is flawed and are comfortable with having an individual or select few changing or usurp the process? Please tell us how that process is not as flawed?

Of course. Nope. Everything in life is flawed including life. Acknowledging this truism allows people with small minds to move on up the food chain

Dainty must have zipped up that chain.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Court rulings the US Constitution protecting slavery: American slave court cases

You did not carefully examine the cases contained in your link, huh?

If this is true, you can easily name a Supreme Court case in the link that says, the US Supreme Court ruled the US Constitution does not protect slavery .. before the Constitution was amended to prohibit slavery

 

[regent]

The constitution constrains no one, it is a document, paper if you will. It is the government that constrains in the name of the constitution, and particulary the president that does the constraing.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Who said that the Constitution means what the SCOTUS says it means?

Well, that's not quite right. It was a Supreme Court Chief Justice who said something ALONG THOSE LINES, however. Hughes.

So while I grok Dainty's quibble, he is nevertheless evading the point.

The Constitution can be amended, as Dainty correctly noted; but the meaning ascribed to parts of the Constitution can also be effectively altered depending on what a majority of the SCOTUS SAYS is "meant" by the words they are "interpreting."

EDIT: I got a little more curious. Hughes did NOT make his little pronouncement in any Court decision.

"We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty and of our property under the Constitution. " Hughes, Charles Evans

Source: CHARLES EVANS HUGHES, speech before the Chamber of Commerce, Elmira, New York, May 3, 1907.

-- Quote - We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeg.. on Quotations Book

enough with the mani-isms

President Obama is supposed to have said "I am constrained by a system that the Founders put in place" here he is not quibbling with interpretation but with the Constitution itself.

In cases were state law conflicts with federal law, both Hamilton and Madison defended the proposition that, the SCOTUS alone gets to decide when state laws conflict with federal laws, that this was agreed to in the framing of the document which included language that spelled this out.

Interpretations and meanings of clauses and phrases do not alter the document. President Obama was being specific. I will go out on a limb and assume he was speaking about the 2nd Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights.

 

[Sallow]

The constitution constrains no one, it is a document, paper if you will. It is the government that constrains in the name of the constitution, and particulary the president that does the constraing.

Well no.

It constrains government.

That's what Obama was referring too.

It's part of the "negative liberties" thing you guys totally misunderstand.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Has it ever occurred to morons like you that the even many of the people who ratified the US Constitution admitted the Constitution is a flawed document?

Benjamin Franklin expressing why he was voting in favor of the proposed Constitution at the Constitutional Convention on Monday, September 17, 1787:

I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them... In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad.

Avalon Project - Madison Debates - September 17

The Southern states used the Constitution to keep the government from running roughshod over the rights of the people to own and trade in Slavery?

Of course they did... but have you considered that without those concessions the Constitution would never have been approved? Many historians believe the seeds for the destruction of slavery were sown in the Constitution. This is based upon the growth of non slave states in the Union, leading the slave states to be a continuning and permanent minority voice in the Union. Most of the crisis leading up to the Civil War dealt with not slavery itself, but the issue of expansion of slavery into the territories and the admission of new slave staes. The South had no chance of matching the North in the House (partly as a result of the 3/5ths compromise), but they insisted upon maintaining a "veto" in the Senate. The newly elected Republican President Lincoln ran on a platform not to abolish slavery, but upon a platform of preventing the expansion of slavery into the territories.

Such a situation could not be tolerated as the South would lose all political clout in the Union... thus the Civil War. The theory goes that the Constitution enticed the South into the Union which would inevitably lead to the abolition of slavery because of changing demographics. Without those enticements, no such Union would have occured and slavery would have persisted much longer in the South and would probably still be maintained as a peonage system of some sort.

BTW... a bit of trivia. Franklin himself was one of the very first "abolitionists" in America, Hamilton was also very strongly abolitionist...

Of course. I know and I agree. Convoluted reasoning./COLOR] The history I know pretty well. The revisionist and/or patently false history is what motivates me to often respond in these types of threads.

 

[Sallow]

The Constitution classified black people as 3/5ths of a human being.

This is a common mal-understanding. No suprise that you, too, have it wrong.

Oh really now.

Just when did blacks in this country get the same rights as whites?

Feel free.

Because it wasn't from the beginning.

 

[M14 Shooter]

The Constitution classified black people as 3/5ths of a human being.

This is a common mal-understanding. No suprise that you, too, have it wrong.

Oh really now.

Yes, really. Now and forever

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Joins in on an invalid argument. The USMB House, Legal Eagle Strikes Again!

Lawyers who actually practice in front of SCOTUS refer to it as "the rule of 5", Dante... and we strive always to find that 5th vote and address the bulk of our argument to persuade them. In Heller the two which were subject to the most persuasion were Kennedy and Ginsburg.

You may consider it invalid, and in a perfect world you would be right. However we do not live in a perfect world.

"I am constrained by a system that the Founders put in place"

Another SCOTUS appointment and that won't be a problem...

Not true. If you admit the Constitution constrains you it constrains you. An amendment would be needed to change that, not an opinion.

If President Obama had said a 'ruling' constrained him you'd have a valid argument.

an example: If you were to admit the Constitution guarantees Free Speech, as it does, you would not argue for an interpretation and found meaning of 'there is no guarantee to Free speech' in the Constitution.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Obama's a madman

 

[M14 Shooter]

Obama's a madman

He takes personal offense at the idea that people don't agree with Him and have the audacity to oppose His agenda.
How dare they!?!?

 

[legaleagle_45]

Court rulings the US Constitution protecting slavery: American slave court cases

You did not carefully examine the cases contained in your link, huh?

If this is true, you can easily name a Supreme Court case in the link that says, the US Supreme Court ruled the US Constitution does not protect slavery .. before the Constitution was amended to prohibit slavery

You miss my point which is that most of the cases in your link were not cases from SCOTUS and were not ruling based upon the US Constitution and several of them were rulings made before the Constitution was even drafted.

Lets go examine those listed in your link..

Brom and Bett v. Ashley-- not a SCOTUS case decided several years prior to the ratification of the US Constitution. ruling: Slaves freed on the basis that the Massachusetts constitutional provision

Quock Walker v. Jennison... not a SCOTUS case decided several years prior to the ratification of the US Constitution. ruling: Slaves freed on the basis that the Massachusetts constitutional provision

Commonwealth v. Jennison... not a SCOTUS case decided several years prior to the ratification of the US Constitution. ruling Justice William Cushing instructs jury that "slavery is in my judgment as effectively abolished

hmmm no need to continue... I am sure you now see my point.

The key cases from SCOTUS on your list are United States v. The Amistad and Dred Scott... there are other SCOTUS decisions listed but they are basically irrelevant to the issues you raise. Dred Scott being the closest to support your assertion. But that is not quite correct. Essentially, SCOTUS ruled that slavery was protected from federal prohibitions. State prohibitions were in place and were effective so as to bar the institution of slavery within free states with the primary exception being the constitutional requirement to surrender fugitive slaves.

Dred Scott is considered by most scholars to be on the list of worst decisions by SCOTUS... others on the list include Plessy v Ferguson, The Slaughterhouse Cases, and Korematsu v. United States

 

[Pogo]

Obama: ?I Am Constrained By A System That Our Founders Put In Place? « CBS DC
Thank God for that.

Did it ever occur to the Incompetent-in-Chief, or any of His useful idiot supporters, that the constitution was created for very purpose of keeping the government from running roughshod over the rights of the people?

Must realy suck for Him, not being able to dictate His agenda.

What's yer point?

Every POTUS is constrained by the Constitution. Is that not how it's supposed to work? Does that officer not take an oath stating exactly that upon inauguration?

Are you new to this country?

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The constitution constrains no one, it is a document, paper if you will. It is the government that constrains in the name of the constitution, and particulary the president that does the constraing.

Captain Clueless Lives on @ USMB. The imbecility is that 'regent' hears people saying the piece of paper actually constrains them physically

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The constitution constrains no one, it is a document, paper if you will. It is the government that constrains in the name of the constitution, and particulary the president that does the constraing.

Well no.

It constrains government.

That's what Obama was referring too.

It's part of the "negative liberties" thing you guys totally misunderstand.

regent totally misses the point, and you chime in missing regent's point?

absolutely marvelous