Well They've Gone And Done It Now...growl

[maeve]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/24/...in2117497.shtml

Constitution, Schmonstitution

Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen Looks At Suggestions For Dumping The Document

I saw this coming (really)…I was just waiting for the day. Did anybody else see the day coming when people would seriously (maybe this should go into the “seriously” thread? “seriously) begin debating whether or not we should ditch our constitution and start over?

I’ve personally been wondering if the B administration would try and pull something like this. I don’t know that any of these lawyers now debating this topic are associated with the administration or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

I think we should all just give it up right now, right here. Let’s just say in one big voice, “Yes, here we are a bunch of apathetic f**koffs waiting to be led like a bull by the nose to the civil rights slaughter house. Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s completely turn over any remaining privacy in the freekn’ name of “security”. Oh , oh mighty security how great thou art that we should willingly and obediently release our freedoms for you, oh mighty protector.

Do I sound soured? *Tossing my hands up in the air* Screw you guys, I’m moving to Gotland!

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

CAn someone post the text of the article? I'm on an extremly slow connection and all that will load are the damn ads.

[maeve]

CAn someone post the text of the article? I'm on an extremly slow connection and all that will load are the damn ads.

Here you go

Constitution, Schmonstitution

Oct. 24, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(CBS) Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suddenly, the most sacred text in America is under attack from all sides. The Constitution was never meant to be a "suicide pact," says eminent judge and author Richard Posner. It's "undemocratic," says University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson. In this time of terror we need a new one — an "emergency Constitution" — says Yale Law School guru Bruce Ackerman. And Richard Labunski, in his fine and timely book about James Madison, pretty much destroys the myth that the Founding Fathers were motivated solely by noble impulses when they crafted the new government's guiding light.

These unsettling theses are a measured distance from the roiling debate in legal circles these days over the Constitution's "original intent" and whether it alone should guide constitutional interpretation. That debate is over how the document should be construed by modern jurists. The debate entered into by the literary firm of Posner, Levinson, Ackerman and Labunski is all about whether and to what extent the document itself deserves the legal and political reverence it receives today. During a time of terror, when writers write lofty words about the need for a strong Constitution, the bright men identified above are talking about taking it apart.

7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard A. Posner, a Reagan appointee, argues in "Not a Suicide Pact: the Constitution in a Time of National Emergency" (Oxford 2006) that in a terrorism-induced choice between individual freedoms and collective security, the Constitution was never intended to side with the first at the expense of the second. Maybe it's Judge Posner's bitter reaction to what he perceives as judicial overreaching in constitutional decisions. Or maybe it's his professed disdain for "civil libertarians" whom, he says "are not always careful about history." Whatever the case, Judge Posner is ready to make malleable the protections contained in the Constitution; he's ready to have bedrock individual rights and protections ebb and flow along a sliding scale depending upon the scope of the crisis.

But at least the good judge is not calling our sacred text "undemocratic," which is as far as Professor Levinson is willing to go. In his new book, "Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong" (Oxford 2006), Levinson argues that it's time for us all to convene another constitutional convention (this time, with air conditioning) to undertake wholesale changes to what he says is an unworkable Constitution. "If I am correct," Levinson writes, "that the Constitution is both insufficiently democratic in a country that professes to believe in democracy, and (emphasis added) significantly dysfunctional, in terms of the quality of government that we receive, then it follows that we should no longer express our blind devotion to it." Them's fighting words!

Professor Ackerman, the Yalie, also doesn't want to be "blindly devoted" to the document we all are taught in public school to be blindly devoted to. All he argues for, in his new book "Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism" (Yale 2006), is that we come up with an "emergency" Constitution (really a series of new constitutional provisions) that will help guide us when the next terrorism attack surely comes. We need a new baseline law, Ackerman writes, "that allows for effective short-term measures that will do everything plausible to stop a second strike — but which firmly draws the line against permanent restrictions." Our existing Constitution isn't good enough for Ackerman because it is so vulnerable to cynical manipulation by our politicians and to neglect by average Americans.

Which brings me to the best book of them all — and the only one of the four worth remembering — and that is Labunski's unheralded "James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights" (Oxford 2006). The University of Kentucky journalism professor offers in mind-numbing detail Madison's efforts first to prevent a bill of rights from being incorporated into the text of the Constitution, and then his real politic realization that the Constitution itself only would be accepted by his fellow Founders if in the end it did include a bill of particularized rights and freedoms. To absorb the Madison book is to understand that the Constitution is neither the Ark of the Covenant (as Thomas Jefferson once famously said) nor a mere legal guidepost along the American way that ought to be dispensed with in difficult times.

It is instead, as Labunski laboriously points out, a document conceived and drafted by rich white men during the political moment of their lives; a document brilliant mostly for its ambiguities and its ability (thanks to generations of judges as polished and as responsible for our rule of law as any of Madison's gang) to foresee the potential, indeed, the destiny, of a changed and changing world. The Constitution is not an undemocratic document — indeed, it is as schizophrenically and unsatisfactorily democratic as the rebels were then and as we are now. It does not need to be replaced, even temporarily, by an "emergency" document that would leave to far lesser men (and women) the task that Madison achieved. And it certainly deserves better than to be manipulated, by zealous and unchecked executive branch actors, in the name of "national security."

I blast modern-day politicians all the time for lazily enacting vague and ambiguous legislation — essentially pawning off the most difficult policy choices upon judges, who then are criticized for making the policy choices that our legislators were supposed to make in the first place. But Madison and Company purposely, and I think with great forethought, pushed through an often vague and ambiguous Constitution and then a Bill of Rights not just because it was the best they could do given the political conflicts of the era but also because they had a certain faith that those of us living in future generations would manage the document with wisdom and care.

Their faith has been rewarded many times before, in eras darker than our own. It is important for esteemed scholars to try to scale mountains, even ones as high and mighty as the Constitution itself. And clearly the document isn't nearly as perfect or as ideal as we all have been taught to think it is. But it usually works. And if we were to suddenly discard it or its core principles now, literally under the gun, we'd be conceding a huge battle in the war against the terrorists. Now is not the time to attack the Constitution. Now is the time to defend it.

By Andrew Cohen

©MMVI CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Oh god... I don't agree with him on many things.. but I can see his logic.. not from that article, but from an actual interview...

http://politicscentral.com/2006/08/28/the_..._show_judge.php

[BrassFusion]

"Our existing Constitution isn't good enough for Ackerman because it is so vulnerable to cynical manipulation by our politicians and to neglect by average Americans. "

I can kind of agree with what he has to say here. We should address a response to "terrorism" before more attacks happen. If we do it right, it could stand to reduce the big-brother nonsense rather than exacerbate it.

[paradox]

do you REALLY want todays politicians writing a new constitution?

i know i sure as hell dont.

it may not be perfect (and it never will be), but its worlds better than the tripe that would result from a rewrite. that would just leave us with bush and his fourth reich.

[BlackHound]

So there is nothing but bad news these days.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

The "relevance" of the original constitution and its intent has long been questioned. This would just be the more recent questioning of it.

There are so many layers upon layers of laws on top of the constitution that trying to "start over" would be virtually impossible. The body of laws and government institutions we have currently are far more sweeping than was intended by the framers. There is nothing holding congress's feet to the original constituions fire. What we have now is so unlike the original document as to be almost unrecognizable. Its already "re-written".

The body of law that we have now has been constructed over the course of 200+ years , based on the constitution. These clowns cant even write one bill, much less re-write the last 200+ years of law and governmental evolution.

If there is specific need , for a specific change, they can do it.

I almost think this "lets re-write the constutiton" idea is a gimmick to sell books and get article readership.

Have a specific problem with a specific law? Ok lets get it changed. Thats how the system works. Trying to sidestep that process and get some focus groups specific version of the law written from scratch without the constitutional amedment process? Scaaary.

[maeve]

Well, the gist that I’m getting from this and the main problem I have with the whole idea is that they are speaking about an emergency constitution. This to me suggests the possibility of a martial type law scenario if we were to come under attack by, whomever, in this country. Unfortunately, I have become extremely skeptical in regards to our government and especially this current administration (they have a long history together). I see huge potential for abuse of power and given the way they have tromped on the constitution already, it wouldn’t surprise me if they established this “emergency” constitution in a way that allows for our elections to be “temporarily” suspended, and god knows what else taken away from us in the name of security.

I’m rather a gloomsday type of person when it comes to politics and very, very paranoid. If you ask me, the patriot acts along with the fixed elections were just precursors to a totalitarian (christain fundamental) rule led by the Bush people that is in process as we speak. They establish this “emergency” constitution and end up with unquestionable rule. And let’s not forget the Boarder Fences that are being put up to “keep the illegal’s out” which could just as easily serve to keep someone IN, the debated national ID (paper’s please), and oh yes, the complete loss of rights if one is declared a terrorist (which thanks to B’s latest Bill that was passed in congress can now charge a person and convict them on hearsay). I’d say we were well on our way to a very undemocratic land. I reiterate..I’m preparing to move to Gotland.

[Homicidalheathen]

The origional constitution protected peoples rights just a bit too well.....and since we are headed towards being a comunist country.....of coarse it will have to go or be changed.

I am moving to Switerland or someplace I think

[Guest Game of Chance]

The origional constitution protected peoples rights just a bit too well.....and since we are headed towards being a comunist country.....of coarse it will have to go or be changed.

I am moving to Switerland or someplace I think

I disagree. Big Brother is a fascist.

[Vampyro]

If there was an alternate constitution that we could read and check out, and be given a choice, that would sound less scary, but as the comment earlier, we are being led like bulls... I still sit and wonder why you see all these gas guzzling SUV's with the Bush/Chensy bumper stickers... and they aint much better off than the rest of us... are they blind? inbred? what the fuck? Let me take this bitch over, here would be my redone constitution...

1)Freedom of speech - self explained but the few modifications...

A) YOU CANNOT PUSH YOUR RELIGEOUS BELIEFS ON OTHERS. This goes for ANY religeon.

B) Any extreme acts on this amendment, such as visual demonstrations that mostly be considered offensive, such as nudity in public won't be allowed, but private property is your own business.

C)Cencorship on the tv or radio, bye bye! If you're offended by it.. DON'T WATCH IT.

2)The right to any firearms you wish so long as you have a doctor's note saying you're mentally stable enough to hold a firearm.

3)Border hoppers are subject to S.O.S. (Shoot on sight) if you see them hopping that border

4)The government CANNOT tap any american phones, PERIOD.

5)Alcohol, shall forever be legal, you must be 18 to drink, or parent approval if younger.

6)Any drug that is in it's natural, and unaltered form, or is a natural chemical in the body shall never be illeagle.

7)You can marry whoever the hell you want same sex or opposite sex, and abort as many kids as you want. Your life is YOUR business, no one elses.

8)You can choose any religeon you wish, and raise your kids on any religeon you wish.

9)Freedom FROM religeon - no one can tell you what you should belive in, good bye door to door Jehova's witnesses!!! (know this is in amendment 1 but hell, best make sure people get the damn point)

That's it for now, but that's the new constitution that would be a step up i think.