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http://www.articlev.com/repeal17.htm

The long and short of it is that the STATES are getting THEIR rights trampled, which many (like myself, although I'm not the OP) believe is why the Federal goverment was able to over reach its power.

The answer to your question points directly to the fundamental importance of the 9th and 10th Amendments and, similarly, to the fundamental importance of a strict interpretation of those two amendments. As it is possible to abuse all manifestations of power over one's fellow men it is of significant interest to the freedom and liberty of all to limit the vesting of authority and power into the hands of politically affiliated figures to an extent that provides them with the ability to fulfill their duly appointed Constitutional without granting them the overt ability to exploit the citizens over whom they wield political power and influence.

Analysis of the importance of the 9th and 10th Amendments and their relation to the historical abuse of power by those who are empowered leads to a root level understanding of why our Federal Government is unconstitutional, has engaged in historical hand-washing to create an illusion of legitimacy, and why said Federal Government of the United States of America is no different from any other fascist government across history which has preached the empowerment of the citizens and their will while, at the same time, stripping them of all rights and powers and using them as unwitting servants to the greater profit of the ruling class.

Was it your sig that, at one time, held a link to Article V's Repeal the 17th page? That page has my favorite link for expressing, neatly and with footnote documentation, how the legislators have slowly and carefully destroyed the power of the states. As if the Civil War didn't do enough to that end.

Although I don't agree with the underlying principle of slavery (inescapable debt is slavery, and there's plenty of that today), I have a great respect for the SCOTUS decision elaborated here. In the discussion of the SCOTUS decision from 1857 it is quite plain that, at least at that time, the Supreme Court recognized that Congress tried, on occasion, to pass laws which were outside of its legal authority. I guess they didn't have the "interstate commerce" excuse back then or, more likely, the lawyers and judges knew that the legal definition of commerce, as it applied to the Constitution, was specifically limited.

Was it your sig that, at one time, held a link to Article V's Repeal the 17th page? That page has my favorite link for expressing, neatly and with footnote documentation, how the legislators have slowly and carefully destroyed the power of the states. As if the Civil War didn't do enough to that end.

Although I don't agree with the underlying principle of slavery (inescapable debt is slavery, and there's plenty of that today), I have a great respect for the SCOTUS decision elaborated here. In the discussion of the SCOTUS decision from 1857 it is quite plain that, at least at that time, the Supreme Court recognized that Congress tried, on occasion, to pass laws which were outside of its legal authority. I guess they didn't have the "interstate commerce" excuse back then or, more likely, the lawyers and judges knew that the legal definition of commerce, as it applied to the Constitution, was specifically limited.

> when GWB signed the Patriot Act and drove a nail in the Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights has been dead for nearly 200 years. See here and here for explanations and rationale.

Regardless, internet traffic arrangements easily fall under the umbrella of interstate commerce, one of the few enumerated powers of the federal government. On the other hand, I'd prefer a wait and see approach rather than adding more lines that may not be needed to the federal code.

On the other hand, maybe we should just repeal the 17th Amendment and go back to the states appointing their senators instead.

More political hand washing. Nothing new here. Different spin on the same old game. Write laws to subvert the limitations of the Constitution and then get the SCOTUS to affirm that the law is good thus pushing the question of legal authority into the closet.

People: "Hey! You can't do that!"
Government: "We wrote a law that said we could."
People: "You don't have the power to write that law."
SCOTUS: "The law is good."
People: "They don't have the power to write that law."
Government: "No soup for you!"

That's precisely why the 9th and 10th Amendments were written--to explicitly forbid the government from overinterpreting its limited set of legitimate powers. With the help of the Supreme Court and the ignorance of the general populance, though, they have done a wonderful job sidestepping that restriction.

> It would seem to me that this falls absolutely under the Interstate Commerce Clause

That's the problem: "it would seem to me" does not mean that it is. Anything and everything under the sun seems to fall under interstate commerce because commerce, in a common definition, can mean nearly anything and everything. An important critical question to ask yourself is,"What isn't 'commerce'?" If your set of things which aren't commerce is pretty darn small that is a certain sign that your definition is too broad since it's obvious that the founding fathers did not mean for their government to be able to regulate anything and everything. That's precisely what we fought the Revolutionary War to get away from--an overbearing British government. Why on earth would they go ahead and recreate the same thing?

It does not fall under the Interstate Commerce backdoor/trojan horse. The Ninth Amendment specifically prohibits the gratuitous overinterpretation (aka "enumeration") of Constitutional powers to mean things that they weren't meant to mean. If one could conduct a critical analysis of "interstate commerce" in the late 1700s they would find that it probably referred to specific types or sets of commerce--likely those which required a federal stamp or federal business license.

When you say "interstate commerce", the average citizen will think of anything which is moving between states--absolutely anything. That doesn't make it the proper legal definition. The federal level politicians, and their business bedfellows, have been exploiting this popular ignorance for years. A detailed, well-documented, and well annotated analysis of the "interstate commerce" rootkit, and how it has been used to decimate the Consitution, is found here.

Have you read the ninth amendment? It specifically forbids the enumeration of the consitution (ie. the interpretation and expansion of powers). Interstate commerce is not a free pass to regulate everything under the sun.

I'd really like to see a critical analysis of what qualified as "interstate commerce" in the late 1700s. I guarantee you that there was a very definite legal setting for it--it probably had something to do with federally issued stamps or business licenses.

A very good documentary of how the "interstate commerce" trojan/backdoor has been used to systematically decimate the intent of the founding fathers is here.

> Currently there is a conflict between various state and Circuit courts as to whether the CAN-SPAM act overrides stricter State laws

Referring to the ninth and tenth amendments (my favorites). The tenth (because, unless you're intimately familiar with them, it's easier to start here): "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

ie. There's no mention of spam or unsolicited mail in the US Constitution. Therefore, the regulation of such things is of no concern to the federal government and is reserved to the states who wish to address it or to the individual people (through local laws and/or courts).

The ninth, because it makes so much sense: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

ie. You cannot enumerate (interpret and expand) the interstate commerce clause in the powers of Congress as a free and open door to regulate anything and everything under the sun. Someone really needs to do a critical analysis of what was considered "interstate commerce" in the late 1700s. It probably had to do with formal licensing and probably dealt mostly with companies that shipped, traded, bought, stored, and sold goods en masse, or something which required a stamp or government inspections to deal in (eg. tea, tobacco, alcohol, etc.)--or something similar. You cannot do this with respect to spam because the right to regulate spam, not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, is reserved to the states or the people.

It took a little bit of googling but I managed to track down an article that I came across, from a Slashdot sig, a year or two ago which goes into great detail how the Supreme Court, acting in the interest mostly of big businesses, has systematically castrated the power of these two Amendments and happily neutered the system of checks and balances which the founding fathers attempted to meticulously craft. The article is very well researched and footnoted and shows that things really began going downhill, for the rights of the states and people, quite quickly after WW-I. That's no surprise. After WW-I the US Gov't had recently hopped off the gold standard and was well on its way to becoming a debtor to the largest bankers and corporations in the world.

Indeed. However, if you read the histories presented on this site it becomes quite clear that the SCOTUS has been systematically castrating the meaning of the 9th and 10th Amendments for at least 100 years.

It's a sad state of affairs when hand-picked Supreme Court justices reduce the Constitution to little more than historical triviality. We might as well live in a despotic empire with token popular elections for feel-good purposes.

The government has no problem following the rules set forth for itI hope that's sarcasm I hear. The government has been systematically ignoring any rules, and using the Supreme Court to marginalize them (see the history of the 9th and 10th Amendments detailed in relation to the 17th here), since the first Congress.

Politicians do not like rules which limit their authority and will use every underhanded trick possible to get around them. Usually it boils down to,"Well, that clearly doesn't apply to us because..."

Not that many other nations' governments are any better--but the USA isn't all it's cracked up to be.

They've been making a mess over the 9th and 10th Amendments since the very first Congress and the Supreme Court has been systematically setting precedent to castrate the 10th Amendment for many decades. A more detailed run-down can be found here. The author details the court cases and the rationale presented by the Supreme Court when justifying its interpretation of the 10th as, more or less, meaningless drivel. I can't say that I disagree with their decisions in some of the cases but, as Supreme Court Justices, one would think that they would understand the purpose behind capping off the Bill of Rights with the 9th and 10th. Apparently political influence has always meant more than the oath to uphold the US Constitution.

We had an authority over a large central government: the States. Until the 17th Amendment destroyed the State guardians, that is.

The War Between States (aka Lincoln's Civil War) was not about slavery, it was about getting away from the tyranny of Clay and Hamilton's American System of Mercantilism.

I believe you're wrong. The Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the documents that discuss the philosophies of the founding fathers make up a standard - the American government is in fact based on that standard, a 'Role Model'. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not philosophical by any means, and did not create a standard 'Role Model' by any means. The Constitution and its Amendments were created to enforce a Federalist Republic of Independent States by requiring that the Federal government be restrained from trampling on the rights of the people.

If government were a reflection of the people governed, ID would be taught in science class and attending church would be mandatory, and the will of the majority would reign - otherwise known as 'mob rule' - because we'd have a Democracy. This is possibly true at the state level, but not the federal level. Education enforcement/standardization and Religious enforcement/standardization are not explicit powers of the federal government. Therefore, ninth and tenth Amendments assures that these rights are kept by the people, or by the individual state if the citizens of that state want it that way. The Constitution was not intended to control the state governments, just the federal government.

The US is a Republic - not a Democracy, and more and more people seem to misunderstand this basic fact. Yes, some officers are elected in a democratic process - but not a pure democratic process. We WERE a Republic, until the 16th and 17th Amendments were created. The 16th Amendment allowed the federal government to lay taxes deemed unconstitutional without the Amendment. The 17th Amendment destroyed the 9th and 10th amendment providing for states' rights by making the Senate a democratically elected federal body, rather than one elected by the state itself. I believe that the 17th Amendment should be repealed immediately.

I believe you are right in saying that more people seem to misunderstand that our federal government is a Federalist Republic, but it seems to me as though you misunderstand what it means to be Federalist and a Republic.

Massachusetts (Constitutionally) does have the right to incur these standards, but I don't understand why they are needed when my business isn't affected at all by the Microsoft "monopoly." I haven't had one single problem opening one single file in almost 8 years.

" There is something reassuring about calm and respectful discussion of a serious issue(...) wheas in the US Senate, it is always a debate, never a discussion"

This is where I conveniently plug efforts to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.