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You know, this thing?

https://constitutioncenter.org...

I am fairly certain that personal correspondence, which would be the modern equivalent of "papers" mentioned explicitly in the amendment, is something that cannot be obtained without a warrant.

That is, unless the constitution is NOT a "Living document" that gets reinterpreted to suit modern climates and courts... and only paper based correspondence is covered explicitly.

Oh, who the fuck am I kidding; The clowns are running the circus, and there are no constitutional rights anymore. Just velvet glove authoritarianism.

When did you win the right for privacy? I must have missed that.

1776, ratified in 1791.

A bit before your time, most likely.

Here, read up on it: https://constitutioncenter.org...

The gist: 2nd amendment was a political compromise to get some people to accept the new federal government and its powers. It was reformulated to mean "individual right to bear arms" in the first decade of the 21 century by a bunch of conservative judges who legislated from the bench to overturn a precedent of 3 centuries.

More below:

Modern debates about the Second Amendment have focused on whether it protects a private right of individuals to keep and bear arms, or a right that can be exercised only through militia organizations like the National Guard. This question, however, was not even raised until long after the Bill of Rights was adopted.

Many in the Founding generation believed that governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. English history suggested that this risk could be controlled by permitting the government to raise armies (consisting of full-time paid troops) only when needed to fight foreign adversaries. For other purposes, such as responding to sudden invasions or other emergencies, the government could rely on a militia that consisted of ordinary civilians who supplied their own weapons and received some part-time, unpaid military training.

Remember, this is a confederation of states.

No, it is not. The founders tried that, and it failed.

That's why they put together a constitution with a much stronger federal government.

This keeps from only 1-2 massively populous states running complete roughshod over the less populous states.

And instead allows a coalition of sparsely populated states to run completely roughshod over the states with the majority of the population. I don't see how that's any better.

The 4th Amendment does not provide any exceptions to its rules.

The SCotUS has consistently ruled that the U.S. Constitution only applies to U.S. soil. That's why Bush put a prison in Guantanamo. The Marine base there is on Cuban soil, leased since 1903. Any prisoners sent there would technically not be on U.S. soil, and thus not gain U.S. Constitutional rights. (A later SCotUS decision ruled that although it wasn't U.S. soil, the U.S. had administrative authority over it making it essentially the same as U.S. soil, granting the prisoners there Constitutional rights.)

So no, if you're trying to enter the U.S. at a border, you're not protected by the 4th Amendment. The answer is muddied a bit by air travel, but some leeway is given for deplaning passengers who have not yet passed through immigration. Some extremists at CBP have interpreted this exception to the extreme to come up with the infamous "Constitution does not apply within 100 miles of an International airport" quote, but given the history behind the SCotUS precendents that interpretation would be highly unlikely to stand up in court.

Also, the argument you're trying to make (applying the U.S. Constitution outside U.S. territory) is extremely dangerous. If you say the 4th Amendment protects people outside the U.S., you set a precedent whereby other U.S. laws can also be applied to people outside the U.S. And that is a can of worms we're trying to prevent from being opened. It sounds like a great idea when your country does it. But if you consider what happens if every country on Earth does it, you realize just how terrible a concept it is.

https://constitutioncenter.org...

Lets assume you're correct in that Obama was terrible, etc etc. Lets ignore huge amounts of people accusing him of not being an American and then saying his birth certificate was faked... when no other president has ever been accused...

Chester A. Arthur was accused of being born in Canada.

The others were technically not Presidents, but Arthur was, if not directly elected, as he succeeded Garfield.

https://constitutioncenter.org...

In Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the question before the court is if a state can constitutionally enforce a civil rights law against a bakery whose owner declined, for First Amendment free speech and religious reasons, to make a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding party.

Jack Phillips and his wife own a business in Colorado, where as a cake artist Phillips designs cakes. In their court petition, Phillips' attorneys note that due to his beliefs, Phillips has also declined to make cakes that celebrate Halloween, anti-American or anti-family themes, atheism, racism, or indecency. When approached by a same-sex couple about making a cake for their wedding, Phillips declined to design a cake with that message, but he offered to make any another cake for them that didn't conflict with his beliefs.

Similar case in the UK

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-nor...

Ashers Baking Company was founded in Newtownabbey in 1992. Run by the McArthur family, the Christian-owned business operates six shops in Northern Ireland.

The bakery came to wider prominence in July 2014 when it emerged that it had declined an order in its Belfast branch from a gay rights activist.

He had wanted them to make a cake that included a slogan that said "support gay marriage" along with a picture of Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, and the logo of the Queerspace organisation.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that has not passed a law to introduce same-sex marriage

The cake was being commissioned for a civic event in Bangor, County Down, to mark International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.

Staff at the bakery passed the order to its head office, which considered it to be "at odds with our beliefs".

Another bakery agreed to accept the order.

In the "Mark Felt" movie, they (the FBI) said they specifically don't work for the White House.

Movies take a lot of creative liberties with facts. There's a decent discussion of the issue here. An excerpt:

For much of the 108-year history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it had only one director – J. Edgar Hoover, who led the agency for a few days short of 48 years. He was as near to a truly independent official in the federal government’s Executive Branch as the Constitution allows. He had his own special relationship with Congress, and ran the Bureau much as he wished.

His successors have not been as powerful, nor as independent. Indeed, one director in the Bureau’s history – former federal judge William S. Sessions – was fired for ethical reasons by President Bill Clinton in the summer of 1993, a little more than halfway through a 10-year appointment. The President’s public explanation was that there had been a loss of confidence in Sessions’ leadership. Then-Attorney General Janet Reno recommended the dismissal.

It is sometimes assumed that the President can oust an FBI director only “for cause” – that is, for some misconduct in office. But, as a Congressional Research Service study of the director’s office pointed out two years ago, “there are no statutory conditions on the President’s authority to remove the FBI director.”

The constitutional reality is that, if a government official is clearly placed within the Executive Branch, that official serves at the pleasure of the President, and can be fired “at will.” That history has had a recent illustration: earlier this month, the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., struck down part of a law by which Congress created a single director to lead the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau – a law that specified that the director could be removed by the President only “for cause.”

The appeals court simply deleted that phrase from the law, thus making the agency’s head subject to being fired by the President for any reason, or no reason at all. (The government has not yet indicated whether it will challenge that ruling in further appeals, perhaps to the Supreme Court.)

That is very much in line with what the Supreme Court has ruled over the years, to preserve the power of the President to be fully in charge of the Executive Branch. Since 1968, a federal law has provided that the head of the FBI will have a 10-year term in office. But the situation legally is that the chance to serve a full term depends upon retaining the confidence of the President.

...which I happen to think that voter records are something that a federal government could legitimately have reasons to demand accurate and unified data on...

I'm not disagreeing with your overall comment, but some federal governments may legitimately ask for this, but the executive office of the United States of America cannot. The executive branch has no role whatsoever in elections.

Article I, Section 4 of the constitution states:

Section. 4.

Clause 1: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

It is up to the states to control elections, Congress can pass laws that can make and alter elections nation wide. The Executive office plays no role. Article 2:

Section. 1. ... Clause 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The states are also in charge of their electors in the electoral college for the President of the United States. The President is not involved. The President should not get involved in the sausage making of the office of the President, as it would be a conflict of interest and cross the boundaries of the balance of power.

The twelfth amendment altered the way the electoral college worked, but it left un-changed the fact that the States, and not the federal government, is in charge of elections.

So it is true that some federal governments may have an interest in this, the federal government of the United States has an extremely limited role. The executive branch has no role in this whatsoever.

While it has generally been understood that the Constitution travels with American citizens whenever they are abroad, their right to sue to enforce those rights depends upon whether Congress or the courts have created a specific legal right to file a lawsuit.

The point of this bill is to create that right for U.S. citizens to sue for unconstitutional search and seizure at border entry points.

Yeah, Nixon always crops up.

It's a textbook classic.

It would have been catastrophic to convict Nixon.

His signature is on many bills passed by Congress and some treaties.

All of those could easily be contested by foreign and domestic actors.

So, it was political and practical.

In the case of President Nixon, he was able to receive a pardon under the precedent of an 1866 Supreme Court ruling called Ex parte Garland, which allowed for a pardon granted by President Andrew Johnson to remain in force for a former Confederate politician.

Pre-emptive pardons remain rare. In addition to Ford’s Nixon pardon, President George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and former CIA official Duane Clarridge in late 1992 before they were tried on Iran-contra Affair charges. (Four others were convicted in the case and also pardoned.)

Here you go, once you've had your parents read it to you go ahead and read this.Hopefully that clears that up for you! :)

I think Buchanan was worse.
http://blog.constitutioncenter...

People do not really understand the first amendment at all do they?

OK, I like where you're going with this...

In short, it's protection from being executed by the government for speaking ill of the government.

(facepalm) So you've never read it either

http://constitutioncenter.org/...

Dude, it's 3 lines of text. At least read it before you try to sound smart.

In other words, you're advocating something despite being totally (and willfully) ignorant of how it works in practice.

Um, no. I'm looking at the unfortunate reality. Here's a link with a breakdown of the 2011-2012 congress at the bottom of the page.

Of the 539 members of congress, 209 were business men/women and 200 were lawyers. Just how exactly do you think they're going to vote? Unfortunately it's simple self interest. Lawyers aren't going to make the legal system easier or simpler. And business people aren't going to make their life any more difficult either.

Do you think the Koch brothers gave $7 million to the republican party in 2014 to make it easier for them to be sued? Or Michael Bloomberg $28 million to democrats that same year? The answer is, of course, no. They do this to buy votes for bills they want, or to obstruct ones they don't want passed. Just look at how damn powerful corporations have gotten over the last 50 years. Then ask yourself who's being "totally (and willfully) ignorant".

This country went to Hell when they stopped giving all day off for elections and got rid of the free beer.

If it was good enough for George Washington, it's good enough for me. Excuse me, I have to go to the outhouse...

But I was not talking about Scalia, but rather Roberts.

Ooops, my mistake. I apologize. Being as Scalia wrote the bit for the dissent, and is getting the most attention in comments here right now, I somehow saw Roberts and saw Scalia. Indeed I was off topic to bring him up by name.

Also, unlike most of them, he has legal background (mildly speaking) so the reading would've been much simpler for him.

I don't easily see any references for the current class of congress-critters, but in the 112th congress more than a third of the total members listed lawyer as their primary occupation. Considering the embarrassing rate at which we reelect people to congress, the number hasn't likely changed much. While I don't dispute the legal experience of Scalia or Roberts, there are plenty of members of congress who are well versed in the law as well.

Yeah, but when was the last time we did that....

http://blog.constitutioncenter...

... why aren't there mandatory whippings for blatant disregard of the Constitution when making laws?

I figure your comment is probably sarcastic but I'll just say that legislators would have to be guilty of something specifically codified in criminal law to be receiving such punishment but since it is not illegal to make dumb laws there is no punishment. Even if it were somehow illegal the Eight Amendment of the very same Constitution forbids such punishment.

Whether or not it is in the criminal law, it is by definition illegal to violate the Constitution because the Constitution is the law of the land. You're right though that no punishment is specified. Perhaps their should be.

... why aren't there mandatory whippings for blatant disregard of the Constitution when making laws?

I figure your comment is probably sarcastic but I'll just say that legislators would have to be guilty of something specifically codified in criminal law to be receiving such punishment but since it is not illegal to make dumb laws there is no punishment. Even if it were somehow illegal the Eight Amendment of the very same Constitution forbids such punishment.

I guess it depends on your definition of cruel and unusual. America has mostly discarded physical punishments such as whippings, but given a choice between a whipping and three years in jail where I'm likely to receive beatings just as bad or worse than the whipping anyway - the whipping would seem less cruel and unusual.

And what about long sentences that effectively remove the prime of your life? You go to jail when you're twenty and come out when your 40 (especially bad for a women who may be deprived of the opportunity to ever have children). 200 or even 400 lashes delivered 10 at a time on a monthly basis (or whatever the back can tolerate) would again seem far less cruel and unusual.

... why aren't there mandatory whippings for blatant disregard of the Constitution when making laws?

I figure your comment is probably sarcastic but I'll just say that legislators would have to be guilty of something specifically codified in criminal law to be receiving such punishment but since it is not illegal to make dumb laws there is no punishment.
Even if it were somehow illegal the Eight Amendment of the very same Constitution forbids such punishment.

Why do you suppose the revision to the Articles of Confederation that became the US Constitution wasn't done like that?

3.The U.S. Constitution was prepared in secret, behind locked doors that were guarded by sentries. -- Fast Facts

Really? I heard he threw great parties and during his term the national debt was $0.00. We need to get back to that balance sheet!

Actually, MySpace IS making their own database that supposedly contains every profile removed due to matching the various sex offender registries and is turning that information over to authorities. Please se here and here.

I am sure you would NOT enjoy having your name and address provided to the local DA along with an implicit statement that I believe you (daveschroeder) to be the very same (daveschroeder) that is a registered sex offender in another state. You might even feel falsely accused. While due process should get the whole mess straitened out, it may not do so until after you have been taken in for some highly inflamitory questioning (perhaps, in part, due to a DA who also needs some good tough on crime press).

If a vigillante group got their hands on my "not an accusation" report, you would get no due process.

The list and reports are not an accusation in exactly the same way as "I'm not sayin' nothin' but buildings burn down and people get hurt all the time" said by the local "protection" salesman is not a threat.

Yeah, they need to make sure the 'right' candidate is elected.

There is a court case in PA which is trying to force the 57 counties which currently use electronic voting machines to use paper ballots.

Obviously this will never happen because having paper ballots would mean having a physical record of a vote if there was a need to do a recount. And we wouldn't want to have a physical trail of votes, now would we?

Some would argue it does...

Granted, all of the links I linked to deal mainly with voting rights and felon(y) disenfranchisement, and not with gun ownership/usage by felons. Even so, as it was originally written, the Constitution of the United States DID NOT prohibit either, it was only later additions to the Constitution (then backed up by Supreme Court rulings) that has entrenched this into the modern US social psyche.

With regards to voting rights, it is strange because the arguments used against felons are similar to arguments which have been used to deny voting rights for other segments of the population, most notably women and blacks. What is sickening is that while true that felons have done something bad, they have no voice after the fact and after they get out of jail, and those who would stand up for their rights after jail are few and far in number. This leads to lack of support for changes to the punishment structure which could arguably make prison more rehabilitative, and less of an institution for state-sanctioned revenge (such as, for instance, elimination of prison rape).

The problem is, that there is already judicial precedence on the issue.

Kendrick, Teri, et al. v. American Amusement Machine Association (docket no. 00-3643)
Appeal: Cert. denied, Oct. 29, 2001.

Issues: Does an Indianapolis, Ind., law against minors playing violent video games in video parlors violate the First Amendment?

Summary: The ordinance forbids any operator of five or more video-game machines in one place to allow a minor unaccompanied by a parent, guardian, or other custodian to use "an amusement machine that is harmful to minors," requires appropriate warning signs, and requires that such machines be separated by a partition from the other machines in the location and that their viewing areas be concealed from persons who are on the other side of the partition. The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ordinance does violate the rights of those under 18 years of age. Judge Posner wrote the decision.

Decision: In denying the appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court makes no ruling on the merits of the law or the challenge to it. It merely means that the case could not get the minimum vote of four justices needed to hear the appeal. It also means that all similar laws in the jurisdiction of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals are void under that court's ruling.

Also check here http://www.constitutioncenter.org/education/ForEdu cators/DiscussionStarters/BanningViolentVideoGames .shtml

and here http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers /walsh.html

So this is nothing new people. Ever since the ID brought us a world where we could literally kill and watch Nazi's die (even before that really). This has been an ongoing debate.

The one thing you MUST realize is that this is not a bill being pushed by the Right-Wing Conservative Nut Jobs (granted they aren't really all against it), this is being pushed by DEMOCRATS. You want to know who hates freedom of speech? Hillary Clinton, after the Columbine murders ordered the surgeon general to find a link between school shooting tragedies and Quake. He found no conclusive link, but that didn't stop her, Lieberman, and the rest of the gang from going hog wild trying to censor video games. I lean left politically, but you can bet your ass I don't agree with censorship.

Do what I did, I joined the EFF http://www.eff.org/ and joined the ACLU http://www.aclu.org/

18 USC 597 prohibits paying someone for their vote or soliciting someone else to pay you for your vote.

18 USC 594 prohibits intimidating or coercing someone else to vote or not vote in a particular manner.

There may be additional statutes relevant to this matter, and there may also be case law on the subject. According to this article, the CA Secretary of State shut down similar websites in 2000, citing California statute as justification for doing so.

Well that's all well and good, except that the Constitution does not allow for any exceptions,

Sure it does. The Constitution provides for judicial review...uh...let me find a cite in the text. Wait a minute...um...go ask Chief Justice Marshall. The Supreme Court certainly wouldn't make anything up, would it?

and in making those exceptions, Congress, the states, and the courts are essentially acting on authority that hasn't been delegated to them by the people.

The people delegated authority for judicial review. Errr...or at least CJ Marshall (and a majority of Supremes) thought so. In any case, a Constitution without judicial review is meaningless. Marshall had it right, or at least as right as it could be under the framework established by the Constitution. It has certainly worked reasonably well.

Laws like that are dangerous, not because of their direct effects (very few people outside the tabloid publishing industry would assert that people should have the right to blatantly lie about each other), but because they send the message that the Constitution is not, in fact, the supreme law of the land.

That is an overbroad reading of things. The US Constitution is the supreme law of the land, but it has its limitations as a "law of the land." It is an enabling (and limiting) document rather than a code, such as exists in some European countries. Enabling documents have to have some sort of limits, and a mechanism for adjudicating those limits. You touch on one of the problems with an enabling provision below (the Commerce Clause).

Besides, at its most naked, constitutional law is not about the original document or the intent of the framers. As Judge Woodside of Pennsylvania succintly put it, "a constitution is not what the words in it mean to a person reading it, nor what the framers intended, nor even what the courts have held, but what a majority of the current justices on the court of highest jurisdiction think it should mean." A Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court once stated at oral argument that, "[i]f we think it ought to be done, we'll find a way to do it." Woodside, Robert, Pennsylvania Constitutional Law at 608. Notably, Judge Woodside stated that as a fact, not as an endorsement.

While that is a frightening display of naked power, it is probably a realistic assessment. It also has worked, more or less, for over two hundred years. There have been terrible situations where the courts have failed us, such as in Plessy v. Ferguson and in the Dred Scott case. There have been cases where the courts have done the "right" thing without a sufficient basis in law (Brown v. Board of Education and Griswold v. Connecticut), but judicial review is really the last, best bulwark against tyranny by democracy. Getting rid of it would, IMHO, make things worse than they would be if judicial review did not exist and if it were up to Congress and the Executive to determine if things are constitutional.

Of course, libel laws aren't even close to being the worst offenses in that manner.

No argument there.

All the crap that Congress passes under the guise of "regulating interstate commerce" is ridiculous.

I agree. One of the most egregious cases was Wickard v. Filburn, which is still good law. A summary can be found here. I think it is ironic that the current Supremes are rolling back the power of Congress under the aegis of federalism (see US v. Lopez) while at the same time they are giving the states broader authority in the criminal realm (do we even have a 4th Amendment anymore?). The irony lies in the fact that the current majority of the Supremes (depicted as arch-conservatives) are probably doing more to limit federal power than any batch since the mid 1800s