Obama We Want Our Fourth Amendment Back
July 10th, 2009Finally, someone in the broadcast media willing to read the Fourth Amendment on the air…
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I was practically laughed off the Finebaum show for raising this issue on the radio in Alabamaland a couple of years ago. Now it is finally on the front page of the New York Times, Washington Post, the AP A-wire and even on prime time cable TV news.
Bush White House Kept Justice in Dark on Wiretapping
Report: Bush Surveillance Program was Massive
U.S. Wiretaps Were of Limited Value, Officials Report
One of these days, someone will listen. The conservatives are all worried about their Second Amendment rights to bear arms, but said nothing when the Bush administration took their Fourth Amendment rights. We are calling on the Obama administration to cooperate in restoring those rights.
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July 11th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Libertarians, however, often inaccurately described as “on the right,” have been incensed about scrapping Fourth Amendment rights for years, certainly what happened to those rights under Bush II.
The Bill of Rights – technically the first ten articles of amendment to the Constitution – actually caused a controversy when proposed during the first years of the operation of the Constitution.
“Strict constructionists” of the day claimed that the Bill was unnecessary since the new government was given no explicit powers to curtail those rights, and that state constitutions protected them anyway. James Madison, the main author of the Constitution, was among them.
But his fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, went ballistic. “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth,” Jefferson maintained. Jefferson, the leader of the anti-Federalists, wanted to straightjacket the new government in every way possible. (Later, as president, he fudged on his own principles when he concluded the Louisiana Purchase with Napoleon’s France.)
Jefferson and his allies won the day on the issue of a Bill of Rights, however. Madison was given what he described as the “nauseating” task of drafting the articles.
The first Congress passsed the articles and sent them on to the states, and the first ten (what has been called the Bill of Rights ever since) were ratified by 1791.
(Georgia, Connecticut and Massachusetts waited until 1939 to ratify the first ten amendments, making the adoption unanimous among the 13 original states, although obviously not necessary by that point in time.)
Interestingly, one amendment proposed in 1789 was not ratified until late in the 20th century. That one contained a provision that congressional salaries could not be “varied” until an election of representatives had intervened. Since the original amendments contained no time limit on their ratification, this provision became part of the Constitution as Amendment 27, the last time the Constitution has been amended.
The Bill of Rights stands on its own as one of the great documents in the history of the rule of law versus tyranny and human rights versus authority. Any government official who attempts to subvert it in any way deserves to be ousted from office immediately and disqualified from ever holding pubic office again. The Bill is that important.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:50 am
America is no longer a nation of laws, if those laws are not upheld by those who have sworn to uphold them.
The present adminisration has sworn to defend the constitution, and is not doing so, by not deposing Cheney, et al under oath.
July 11th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Actually, the way I remember the history, the U.S. Constitution passed on the promise that a Bill of Rights would follow. Some members of the Continental Congress wanted slavery to be addressed, but the Southern states would not have joined the Revolution if the question of slavery had not been left for another day. It waited almost 100 years, until two years into the Civil When President Lincoln finally signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 — mainly because he needed the slaves to fight because the South was winning about every battle in the war.
That act likely saved the union, since it gave the North the moral high ground.
July 11th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
The problem now is that we have representatives in government who are willing to sign away our rights to win one election.
Can the Constitution Survive Politics Without Principle?