The Stafford Voice

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Constitution

Ben Carson: ‘People Are The Problem, Not So Much Guns’

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CNN’s Don Lemon asked Ben Carson about the role guns in society.

Dr. Ben Carson’s response:

“We have to recognize that we are a country of laws and we have a supreme law called the U.S. Constitution.

The Second Amendment of that Constitution gives citizens the right to keep and bare arms. Therefore, anything that we’re going to do has to be done with respect to the Second Amendment.”

 

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The Constitution Reader Challenge: Day 10

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With special thanks to Constituting America and Heritage College, we will be taking part in their project:The U.S. Constitution: A Reader. It is a 90 day challenge to learn and dive deeper into understanding the Constitution.

In case you missed it, catch up with day 9 HERE.

Yesterday we read the Constitution. Today, we read what Chief Justice John Marshall said on Marbury v. Madison.

Today’s reading can be found HERE

As important as it is to know what inspired those that wrote the Constitution, it is equally important to know what those things contained within it mean. That is why this opinion published by Chief Justice Marshall is so vital. It helps define judicial review and its power and limitations. (And those limitations are equated from branch to branch.)

Nothing helps define that better than when he said:

“The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation.”

How’s that for defining the government and its limits to power? The Constitution a great mediator when those who seek power try to reach beyond what it limits them to.

The Constitution is a pillar upon what defines our government; along with its checks and balances.

Are you enjoying this challenge along with us? If so, please share with your friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, Email or any other way you feel inspired to. Also, feel free to leave a comment or two.

Judge Rules Obamacare Unconstitutional

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Judge Roger VinsonFlorida US district judge, Judge Roger Vinson ruled on Monday that the entire Obamacare was unconstitutional because it violates the Commerce Clause. At this point, it is almost certain that it will be placed before the Supreme Court. At which time, it would likely be ruled unconstitutional as well putting a hault to Obamacare.

In Vinson’s words (in a FoxNews report):

“I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the act with the individual mandate. That is not to say, of course, that Congress is without power to address the problems and inequities in our health care system. The health care market is more than one-sixth of the national economy, and without doubt Congress has the power to reform and regulate this market. That has not been disputed in this case. The principal dispute has been about how Congress chose to exercise that power here,” Vinson wrote.

“While the individual mandate was clearly ‘necessary and essential’ to the act as drafted, it is not ‘necessary and essential’ to health care reform in general,” he continued. “Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void.”

Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling on Obamacare (PDF)

Understanding the Tenth Amendment

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A Heritage Foundation essay:

“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.”

— Amendment 10

The Tenth Amendment expresses the principle that undergirds the entire plan of the original Constitution: the national government possesses only those powers delegated to it. The Framers of the Tenth Amendment had two purposes in mind when they drafted it. The first was a necessary rule of construction. The second was to reaffirm the nature of the federal system.

Because the Constitution created a government of limited and enumerated powers, the Framers initially believed that a bill of rights was not only unnecessary, but also potentially dangerous. State constitutions recognized a general legislative power in the state governments; hence, limits in the form of state bills of rights were necessary to guard individual rights against the excess of governmental power. The Constitution, however, conferred only the limited powers that were listed or enumerated in the federal Constitution. Because the federal government could not reach objects not granted to it, the Federalists originally argued, there was no need for a federal bill of rights. Further, the Federalists insisted that, under the normal rules of statutory construction, by forbidding the government from acting in certain areas, a bill of rights necessarily implied that the government could act in all other areas not forbidden to it. That would change the federal government from one of limited powers to one, like the states, of general legislative powers.

The Federalists relented and passed the Bill of Rights in the First Congress only after making certain that no such implication could arise from the prohibitions of the Bill of Rights. Hence, the Tenth Amendment—a rule of construction that warns against interpreting the other amendments in the Bill of Rights to imply powers in the national government that were not granted by the original document.     Continue reading . . .

Restrained by the Constitution

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by Ken Connor

“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” Thomas Jefferson

On December 13, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson issued a decision on the Commonwealth of Virginia’s challenge to the constitutionality of Obamacare’s “minimal essential coverage provision,” sparking a flurry of controversy and commentary by declaring that neither the Interstate Commerce nor the General Welfare clauses of the Constitution permits Congress to mandate that Americans purchase health insurance.

As a conservative, of course I am delighted with the decision.  As an attorney, I am impressed by Judge Hudson’s admirable exercise of judicial restraint in crafting his opinion. Continue reading . . .

Daily Dose

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19th Amendment

Section 1. The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.


Ground Zero Mosque; Religious Toleration or Intoleration?

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There is a great deal of attention being placed on the proposed Ground Zero Mosque, and if it should or shouldn’t be. However, debate on the foundation of religious toleration is where attention should be focused.

Playing on the emotions of Americans, is the idea of building the GZ Mosque. Still feeling and seeing the aftermath of the fall of the twin towers is where people are allowing confusions and emotions to play into the formulation of opinions. And, while that is not wrong, it isn’t right either.

Even the Founding Fathers debated heavily on this very subject, and in so much that the Statue of Libertycries, “Give me your tired,  your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” That’s it. At the end, there is no addition that says, “except Muslims.”

The Anti-Federalists proposed, during the Virginia Convention on June 27, 1788 when debating a proposed Bill of Rights:

That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only be reasopn and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefor all men have an equal, natural, and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and that no particular religious sect or society ought to be favored or established, by law, in preference to others.

However, toleration could lead to intoleration when supposed that the religious belief of one leads to the harm of another. Case in point, the ludicrous act of the events on 9-11. Waged in a ‘holy war’ on the West, Muslim followers – carried out on religious belief – were in cause of harm to another. At which point, when a nation of tolerant people became intolerant.

In echoing the sentiments of the Founding Fathers, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said recently in an address:

The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.

A nation founded on the idea of freedom of religion, America has been tolerant to those welcomed in her arms. And, America must continue to show mercy, compassion and tolerance to those of the Muslim faith. However, when the constraints of the Muslim faith place harm on others by claim of ‘religious laws’ in the form of Sharia Law, caution must still be a leading factor.