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Then he will allow an audit?

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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
Doesn't the Constitution actually lay out the process for adding an amendment? Things like the vote for women, for an example? I use that one, because your inability to do anything but snark, makes an argument for repeal.

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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ORIGINAL: flcouple2009

Julia,

What I love is when they start of their rant about how the Constitution is sacred and needs to be taken word for word, blah blah.  Then they turn around and want to add a Constitutional amendment for whatever whim they have at the time.

But they also deride the Elastic Clause as being the tool of "activist judges" (whatever the fuck that means), unless of course they are Right Wing activist jurists.

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I like your choice of the word 'elastic'

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The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

Then he will allow an audit?

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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I like your choice of the word 'elastic'

Actually, it was not my choice of words... it is also known as the Necessary and Proper Clause..

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The Congress shall have Power - To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

I agree with the fact that it has been used by many of our leaders in different ways... some of them I approve of and some I do not. I am not terribly against activist judges... but I do find it a bit hypocritical that the left is constantly blamed for it when a significant portion of the activism comes from the right

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the Basket Clause, the Coefficient Clause, and the Sweeping Clause.

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ORIGINAL: Fightdirecto

During GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign announcement on Saturday, the former pizza executive took a moment to lecture the country on its need to “reread the Constitution”:

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We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America, we need to reread the Constitution and enforce the Constitution...And I know that there are some people that are not going to do that, so for the benefit of those who are not going to read it because they don’t want us to go by the Constitution, there’s a little section in the Constitution that talks about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

You know, those ideals that we live by, we believe in, your parents believed in, they instilled in you. When you get to the part about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” don’t stop there, keep reading. Cause that’s when it says “when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” We’ve got some altering and some abolishing to do!

Cain really should have taken his own advice, however, before he decided to lecture the entire country about the Constitution. The phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution’s text. Nor does the Constitution include a phrase about the right of the people to alter or abolish a government that is destructive of their ideals. Both of those phrases appear in the Declaration of Independence, which, in case Mr. Cain is not aware, is actually an entirely different document than the Constitution — written over ten years earlier and is NOT a law anywhere in the United Sttes of America.

Sadly, Cain’s ignorance of the nation’s founding documents makes him well-suited to compete in a GOP presidential primary. Republicans have called everything from Social Security to Medicare to child labor laws unconstitutional, and they’ve even pretended that the Constitution allows them to strip Americans of their citizenship. So Cain needs to look no further than his own party if he wants to find people who are more interested in rewriting the Constitution than in actually reading it.

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

great minds think alike, but the thing is called the Santa ClausE.