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The debate on the Civil Rights Act [of 1866, precursor to the Amendment] contained the following exchange:
Mr. Cowan: I will ask whether it will not have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country?
Mr. Trumbull: Undoubtedly.
...
Mr. Trumbull: I should like to inquire of my friend from Pennsylvania, if the children of Chinese now born in this country are not citizens? Mr. Cowan: I think not.
Mr. Trumbull: I understand that under the naturalization laws the children who are born here of parents who have not been naturalized are citizens. This is the law, as I understand it, at the present time. Is not the child born in this country of German parents a citizen? I am afraid we have got very few citizens in some of the counties of good old Pennsylvania if the children born of German parents are not citizens.
Mr. Cowan: The honorable Senator assumes that which is not the fact. The children of German parents are citizens; but Germans are not Chinese; Germans are not Australians, nor Hottentots, nor anything of the kind. That is the fallacy of his argument.
Mr. Trumbull: If the Senator from Pennsylvania will show me in the law any distinction made between the children of German parents and the children of Asiatic parents, I may be able to appreciate the point which he makes; but the law makes no such distinction; and the child of an Asiatic is just as much of a citizen as the child of a European.

President Johnson even object to the provision that it would make "anchor babies" legal citizens, and sent it back to Congress, at which point they promptly *overrode* his veto, making their intention quite clear. Relevant citations:
1st Session, 39th Congress, pt. 1, p. 498.
1st Session, 39th Congress, pt. 4, pp. 2891-2.
Johnson's Veto

A reinterpretation would require quite a bit of intellectual dishonesty. Not that I'm putting that past anyone.

Progressive does NOT automatically equal Democrat. I'm am so sick and tired of everyone only seeing two sides, turning everything into a razor thin monolith with D on one side and R on the other. Perhaps you've heard of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative." Once upon a time there was a movement of Progressive Republicans.

"To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." This was back in 1912. plus ça change, plus c'est la.

Who do I stand with? Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and other like them. Both "parties" are morally corrupt, and under the control of the planet-spanning corpocracy. We had a chance with Sanders, but we squandered it. Johnson is a joke. Trump is only in this for Trump, Inc. Hillary is inherently unlikable, and is a corporate puppet who only changed her tune at all because of Sanders. Neither should be President.

However, given the "choice" we've been presented, I still would rather have a corrupt, mean politician as opposed to a megalomaniac who is intent on building an oligarchy like his buddy Putin.

There's a conspiracy at all levels of every branch of the government, threatening to undermine the very freedoms America was founded on. It is so pervasive and the agents are so highly trained that they are only detectable in subtle ways. The agents of the conspiracy will never reveal their actions, and it is only by this secrecy that the conspiracy has persisted for so long and affected our government in so many ways. For decades, the American economy has suffered while China's has boomed, and the American people are entitled to know who is responsible for the tremendous economic victory in Asia and the dismal American defeat-the greatest defeat any nation has suffered in war or peace.

It is essential, therefore, that we put the spotlight of exposure on those who are responsible for this disaster. This is important, not for the purpose of exposing past failures, but because those same men are now doing America's planning for the future. Unfortunately they have become so deeply entrenched that almost every power of the Government is used to sabotage any attempt to expose and root them out...

...I have tried to give you the highlights of a difficult and dangerous situation that exists. You have as a flaming backdrop to my remarks the facts of the world as you find them today. Cyberwar is no longer a creeping threat to America. It is a racing doom that comes closer to our shore each day. To resist it we must be intelligently strong.

Such strength will come only from men and women dedicated to the wholehearted defense of democracy. The average American who constitutes the heart and soul of this Nation is so dedicated. We must be sure that those who seek to lead up today are equally dedicated. We cannot survive on half loyalties any more than we can find the facts of conspiracy with half-truths.

"The war was about states' rights, and against crushing economic pressure brought by northern industrialists."

Bullshit. The slave states were just fine with violating "states' rights" with the Fugitive Slave Act.

It was about slavery. The confederate vice president said so in his "cornerstone" speech in 1861.

"The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right."

You might be thinking of Jefferson. He thought that it should be a feature of government that a new constitution be written, not every 200 years, but every nineteen or twenty, so that each new generation could best tailor the government to its needs. Letter to Samuel Kercheval, second to last paragraph.

Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the American Civil War, and ignored Chief Justice Roger Taney when Taney declared Lincoln's proclamation unconstitutional. (Note that Taney was a Confederate sympathizer who privately approved of secession). Lincoln also jailed Maryland politicians in order to prevent Maryland from seceding, which would have left Washington City surrounded by the Confederacy from both the north and the south.

Not trying to equate Lincoln's actions with those of the current administration -- clearly the very fate of our nation was at stake during Lincoln's terms of office and he was forced to take many highly unusual steps -- but there is indeed precedent for the suspension of habeas corpus. And, of course, the Bush administration has used almost the same language as my previous sentence to justify many of its actions.

...for the serious Enquiry of learned Physicians, Chemists, &c. of this enlightened Age

Um...I don't know where you get your definitions from...but killing over 100 people sounds like an act of war to me.

Plus, if the difference between a getting a trial in the U.S. and not getting a trial is based on a word with a very loose definition (war) something is wrong.

NO U.S. citizen (unless maybe they are found on a battle field in the middle east fighting our troops) should not get a fair (as can be) trial.

Of course, if you disagree, you are in good company.

For all the talk of how the PATRIOT Act is somehow systematically unraveling our freedoms, it's not the only time this sort of thing has been done during a time of war.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus entirely, essentially ignoring the right of jury trials and the Bill of Rights. Clearly American democracy did not perish afterwards, and the right was later reinstated at the end of the war. No matter how odious the PATRIOT Act really is, it barely compares to Lincoln's actions.

During the Second World War, President Roosevelt was granted the power to try American citizens as enemy combatants as well. In the landmark case Ex parte Quirin Chief Justice Stone wrote:

Citizenship in the United States of an enemy belligerent does not relieve him from the consequences of a belligerency which is unlawful because in violation of the law of war. Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war. It is as an enemy belligerent that petitioner Haupt is charged with entering the United States, and unlawful belligerency is the gravamen of the offense of which he is accused.

It is quite clear that members of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are enemy belligerents in every sense of the word. They deliberate target the civilian population, do not follow the rules of warfare as laid out in the Geneva Conventions, and are willing to use the most deadly weapons in existence in order to kill as many people as possible without regard for their status as non-combatants.

More recently, library records were instrumental in locating Andrew Cunanan, the man responsible for the murder of Gianni Versace. Yet very few civil libertarians seemed to have an issue with this. If it is acceptable to search library records to find a serial murderer, why not a terrorist. And why a library records so sacrosanct when other private records such as phone conversations and financial records could already be examined by the government under RICO and other laws?

There is something about the furor over the PATRIOT Act that suggests its motivated more by political opinions than an honest belief in civil rights. Certainly those who protest the PATRIOT Act now must recognize the horrendous erosions of civil liberties that occurred in the previous Administration under the guise of the "war on drugs" including no-knock warrants and other practices.

I can find some agreement with those who say that the PATRIOT Act goes to far, and there is nothing wrong or unpatriotic about holding the law to a high standard. However, I would lend far more credence to those who make their arguments in full understanding of the nature and intent of groups like al-Qaeda. We cannot afford to give more civil protections to Tony Soprano than we do to Osama bin Laden, which was the state of US law before September 11. If the PATRIOT Act is too onerous, the critics have the obligation of suggesting how we might better balance the needs to protect the safety of our nation while maintaining civil rights.

In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, delegates adopted provisions that were anti-democratic because they were distrustful of the judgment of the common people. Many delegates wanted a democracy but the majority didn't think we could handle the responsibility.

This is similar to the Chinese government deciding what is best for its citizens.