Thoughts on the Civil War...

john smith 1 month ago

The "Late Unpleasantness" was faught for the same reason all wars are faught - resources (money). (1) Federal tariffs on the cash crops of the South funded the Federal government. The South was tired of paying the bill for the entire country. Abolishing slavery without abolishing the tariffs would have bankrupted the South. (2) The professor admits the North grew food crops for local consumption, but doesn't mention the tariffs on the cash crops of the South. (3) Slavery was a dying institution all over the Western world. Even the serfs in Russia had been freed. But the professor fails to mention "indentured servitude", the Yankee version of white slavery. (4) The professor is paid by the Federal government. What other position could he be expected to take? (5) Why is it that modern liberal Americans (the professor is one) cheer the rebellions of abused peoples rising against tyranny all over the world but support the tyranny of the US Federal government? The United States is called the United States for a reason. After the American Revolution, each state was an independent republic. They united under an agreed upon Constitution that severely limited the powers of the Federal Government. The Federal government wanted to exercise powers not granted or prohibited by the Constitution. It is now 2016. The Federal government has intruded into the daily lives of the citizens and dictates how local and state governments operate, all in direct violation of the Constitution. How is this done? It is done with money and the threat of bullets for non-compliance. So, was the South right? Yes it was. Unless you are the type that enjoys bureaucrats in Washington dictating how your local schools are run, which roads get built and which don't, the EPA stopping a local dam project, or the Department of Agriculture stopping you from growing a crop on your land, the list goes on and on. Southerners wanted to be free. Yankees wanted to be ruled. Enjoy your 21st version of slavery. The effort to stop it perished on July 3, 1863.

Strict Scrutiny

Cliff H says:

February 14, 2016 at 15:57

In our nation’s Constitutional history, from ratification of the Bill of Rights until now, not one word of the first ten amendments has been modified, revoked, repealed or revised, so far as I know. SCOTUS may have on many occasions subverted their intent without actually changing their content, but official, legal, Constitutional action has never occurred. It would be a very dangerous precedent to promote such a policy at this time, or at any time.

If any attempt is made at correcting government nullification of the Bill of Rights and the 28 or so enumerated natural, civil and Constitutionally protected rights therein it MUST be in the form of a new amendment on the order of “With regards to the first ten amendments to The Constitution of the United States of America; all government entities, bureaus and officials are required to apply strict scrutiny to their interpretation according to the meaning of the language as it was understood at the time of their ratification. Failure to apply such strict scrutiny shall result in the individual and their immediate supervisor being charged with violating their oath of office and upon conviction being removed from their position and barred for life from holding or being appointed to any position paid for by tax payer funds.”

What's unusual?

Michael Zeleny

2/5/2016 5:12 AM CST [Edited]

Clearly you haven’t read the opinion being discussed: 
 
Nothing in Heller suggests that courts considering a Second Amendment challenge must decide whether a weapon is “unusually dangerous.” Moreover, the difficulties that would arise from the application of such a standard are fairly apparent. How is a court to determine which weapons are too dangerous to implicate the Second Amendment? The district court believed that semi-automatic rifles with LCMs are too dangerous based on evidence that they unleash greater destructive force than other firearms and appear to be disproportionately connected to mass shootings. But if the proper judicial standard is to go by total murders committed, then handguns should be considered far more dangerous than semi-automatic rifles. “[M]ost murders in America are committed with handguns. No other weapon is used nearly as often. During 2006, handguns were used in 60% of all murders while long guns . . . were used only in 7%.” Carl T. Bogus, Gun Control & America’s Cities: Public Policy & Politics, 1 Alb. Gov’t L. Rev. 440, 447 (2008) (footnote omitted). And, the use of handguns in the number of overall homicides is out of proportion to the ownership of handguns. See id. at 447 (“[A]mong the 192 million guns in America only 35% are handguns. . . [H]andguns are used in 88% of all firearm murders.” (footnote omitted)). Yet Heller has established that handguns are constitutionally protected and therefore cannot be too dangerous for Second Amendment purposes.  
 
Furthermore, Heller refers to “dangerous” and “unusual” conjunctively, suggesting that even a dangerous weapon may enjoy constitutional protection if it is widely employed for lawful purposes, i.e., not unusual.  

Something is rotten in the SCOTUS

brettbellmore

2/5/2016 5:12 AM CST

Of course, the Heller "typically possessed" standard has a serious problem with it:  
 
For some 70 years prior to the Heller case, the Supreme court routinely refused to take any case where the 2nd amendment was so much as mentioned. During that time, a large number of laws accumulated, which would likely never have survived had the 2nd amendment been actively enforced by the Court. 
 
So the current facts on the ground, the types of guns that it is common or uncommon to own, is actually a result of laws whose constitutionality the Court was refusing to review! It's rather as though the Court had declared that segregation was presumptively ok because it was traditional, and ignored that it had only had the chance to become 'traditional' because the Court wasn't enforcing the 14th amendment all that time. 
 
It's quite possible that, were it not for all those laws the Court was refusing to review, short barreled shotguns would be the preferred home defense weapon, and people would typically own whatever the common battle rifle of the US military was. Likely, even.

It's all there...

MostConservativePatriot

2/5/2016 1:30 PM CST

No, what really needs to happen is Argentina style Dirty War tactics. If liberal judges knew that if they made anti-Constitutional rulings, they'd be picked up by the military in the middle of the night and thrown into the ocean from planes, they'd stop their BS in a heartbeat.

he people of this nation are too intelligent...

Winthrop Staples

 is a trusted commenter Newbury Park, CA 10 hours ago

Yes, the people of this nation are too intelligent to believe the scapegoating of gun ownership most of this nation's problems propaganda of the New York Times. Nations in Northern Europe have high gun ownership rates & a small fraction of our murder rates. Next we need to kill the fantasy that the rest of the nation's problems are due to evil white people being racist and xenophobes. Then perhaps we'll be able to deal with reality, attack the real causes, like the criminal rigging of our economy and society of our 1% sending most manufacturing jobs to our sworn enemy China, and failed corrupt states like Mexico, and importing 10's of millions of illiterate immigrants and paying them 1/3 of a living wage, so killing wages for citizens also. And our media advertising 24/7 indoctrinating our citizens to be emotion driven super-selfish gluttons driven insane by a continual diet of hyper violent video games, explosion/kill a minute films, prescription drugs and continual encouragement to claim some kind of disability to avoid adult responsibility, to act out "do what you feel", obsess about what you feel, instead of exercising reason and self control, acting like adults ... because this all make us vulnerable consumers of flimsy breaks, is out of style in a week high profit margin junk made overseas by the equivalent of slaves. Brain washing us all into perpetual adolescents also enables our elites to justify defying the popular will and interest regarding these many issues.