If the Constitution of Original Meaning & Intent has been so distorted that the original limits of the Constitution CANNOT be discerned in the positions and actions of the present administration, then we are left with the primary Founding document that cannot be corrupted.

Parapacem, parabellum. Buy specie, guns and groceries.

1/5/1788
Bright Alexander Hamilton, using the pen name “Publius,” publishes “Federalist #34,” paragraph two of which explains the importance of maintaining two independent legislatures:

It is well known that in the Roman republic the legislative authority, in the last resort, resided for ages in two different political bodies not as branches of the same legislature, but as distinct and independent legislatures, in each of which an opposite interest prevailed: in one the patrician; in the other, the plebian. Many arguments might have been adduced to prove the unfitness of two such seemingly contradictory authorities, each having power to annul or repeal the acts of the other. But a man would have been regarded as frantic who should have attempted at Rome to disprove their existence. It will be readily understood that I allude to the COMITIA CENTURIATA and the COMITIA TRIBUTA. The former, in which the people voted by centuries, was so arranged as to give a superiority to the patrician interest; in the latter, in which numbers prevailed, the plebian interest had an entire predominancy [sic]. (Emphasis in the original)
Postscript: This concept of bicameralism has been vitiated, demeaned and disparaged by the fraudulent 17th amendment.
(This is the first of 26 entries.) I searched on 17th amendment.

When I wrote “BOH”, it was actually a typo. I meant to write “BOR”. I’m not sure why it happened twice.

“Such a drastic change would have certainly been VERY clearly explained and much debate would have existed at the time about it.“

And lets not forget that many of the signers of the Constitution itself, were former State legislatures and State attorney Generals

Many had also partaken in their State constitutional conventions, and were responsible for the formation of their own State Constitutions, and some had even signed the Declaration of Independence.

So when these federal judges attack our republic, they have betrayed the people.

He also repeatedly mentions Madison’s support for the BOH to be enforceable on the states and uses this to justify his position that the 14th does this.”

What is “BOH”? I get BOR for Bill of Rights, but what’s BOH? This is only one example.
On my keyboard H & R are not adjacent, so I can’t think it’s only a typo.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jol/vol42_1/kaczorowski.php

This Harvard professor argues that congress does, in fact, have the power to enforce the BOR on the states. His argument focuses mainly around the civil rights act of 1866, claiming that this act was enacted to protect AND ENFORCE the rights of all US citizens, and thus was incorporated into the 14th amendment in order to ensure its constitutionality and to place statutory guarantees of civil rights into the constitution.

Personally, I think this professor is making a huge leap here. I think he is confusing “privileges and immunities” (which are ones of the focuses of the 14th) with the actual rights recognized by the bill of rights. The 14th does provide safeguards for privileges and immunities, but I believe that it clearly does NOT grant the federal government the power to safeguard the rights in the BOR. He is also disregarding that the definition of P&I was already defined in the constitution and it was not a synonym for the BOR.

He also repeatedly cites several examples of congressional use of plenary power to enforce things upon the states (such as property rights) as evidence that the framers intended for the BOR to be enforcable upon the states. I would say that just because congress did such a thing does not mean that they have been granted the power to do so in the constitution–which is one of the primary reasons we are in this mess and this website exists!

He also repeatedly mentions Madison’s support for the BOH to be enforceable on the states and uses this to justify his position that the 14th does this. However, he fails to mention that this idea of Madison was soundly rejected by congress, as Michael Boldin repeatedly touched on.

Futhermore, the Supreme Court recognized the limited reach of the 14th Amendment several times, including in Barron v. Baltimore. It wasn’t until the middle and latter half of the twentieth century that the “incorporation doctrine” was adopted by the courts. This would clearly indicate that the originalist view of the 14th was NOT to allow the federal government to apply the bill of rights to the states.

It is leaps such as these, where people try to find holes in the constitution and/or twist its words in order to justify granting the government more power, that have really screwed things up. If the framers really wanted the 14th to make the BOR federally enforceable on the states, they would have EXPLICITY said so. The amendment would have specifically defined it or they would have added a completely separate amendment stating so. They would have had to because the BOH clearly states things like “congress shall make no law”, rather than, “a state shall make no law”.

Think about the following if you subscribe to the incorporation doctrine–if it was really the framers’ intention to make such a huge, sweeping change to the constitution and federal power, why would they do it in such a subtle manner as to make people wonder what the intent was????? Why would they choose to completely change our decentralized government into a centralized one with and in an amendment that was about naturalization, emancipation, representative apportionment, and insurrection?? Such a drastic change would have certainly been VERY clearly explained and much debate would have existed at the time about it. It would have been made so clear that no room for speculation would have been left, which would have most certainly required a separate amendment.

This same logical concept I’ve outlined regarding the perversion of the 14th Amendment also applies to the theory that the “necessary and proper clause” grants the government the power to do whatever it basically wants–why would the framers have even bothered to write such a document that limited and restrained government power with an extremely elaborate set of checks and balances if they were going to simply include a clause that grants unlimited power to the same government? It just makes no sense.

Excellent comments so far here. I appreciate the dialog here very much because I have learned a great deal from it.