What if the government never took the Constitution seriously? What if the same generation - in some cases, the same individuals - who wrote in the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law .. abridging the freedom of speech," also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the government? What if the feds don't regard the Constitution as the supreme law of the land?
Abigail didn't anticipate that another King George, presiding over America almost 250 years later, would have so expanded his authority that he could designate persons-including American citizens-as "enemy combatants" to be held in military prisons without due process. (Ironically, though, Abigail's husband John, during his own presidency, would assume king-like powers thanks to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which punished criticisms of himself or Congress.) Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister and insistent protector of international human rights, said this past March that the reputation of the United States has so deteriorated all over the globe that "the magic is over.
A constitutional debate among legal scholars is being waged over a key provision in the Democrats' health care legislation that poses this question about the freedom to be an American: Can the federal government force people to purchase medical insurance or pay a tax if they refuse? Members of Congress, believing they are a power unto themselves far beyond the constraints of the Constitution, have a history of passing laws infringing upon our freedoms ever since the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Sometimes this was distasteful work, as shown by the enforcement of excise taxes on whiskey in the 1 790s, the Alien and Sedition Acts later in that decade, and finally the Fugitive Slave Act, which required U.S. Marshals to locate, capture, and return escaped slaves. Many state beai law enforcement agencies are unable to actively seek fugitives due to a hck of resources.. ..By combining federal, state and local law enforcement officers, a FIST team can free manpower to concentrate exclusively on the apprehension and arrest of fugitives. Scanning all the "most wanted" lists from these levels, the Governor of New Jersey stated at a joint announcement, "This Task Force is yet another example of this Administrations commitment to maximize law enforcement resources by working in partnersh...
The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, drafted by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, are an example of government actors other than judicial officers engaging in dialogue regarding the Constitution. The controversy focused on the ability of the states to nullify laws enacted outside the powers expressly granted by the states to the federal government. Constitutional debates should not be seen as solely the domain of the courts. The rights of the states to question constitutionality is itself a principle central to the Constitution.
A: There's a quote, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." We've seen this before. We've seen it from the Alien and Sedition Acts {imposed by President John Adams in 1798 under the threat of war from France}, and we've seen it in Orwell's 1984, this idea of using war, a permanent war, the war on terror. How do you win a war on terror anyway? I see it being waged as an excuse to diminish people's civil liberties. I feel my duty as an American citizen, then as a congressional candidate and as a congressman, to fight that wherever I can. You can do searches and seizures, there is a way in the Constitution, it's in the Bill of Rights; you must have a warrant. I don't see why that should change now. I try to see it from the perspective of the Justice Department. I think when yo...
If you don't think you could be spirited away on flimsy charges, consider our country's other experiments with totalitarianism. Benjamin Franklin Bache - Ben Franklin's nephew and editor of one of Philadelphia's largest newspapers, The American Aurora - was charged under John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts for "libeling" Adams and died before he was able to defend himself. When Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, the military rounded up thousands of Southerners in wholesale lots for "engaging in disloyal practices." When Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Acts, Eugene Debs ended up campaigning for president as a Socialist from a federal pen in Atlanta. When Japanese-Americans lost their habeas corpus rights via Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066,...
You know that Dr. Seuss opus If I Ran the Circus? It concerns a tiny world-beating go-getter who knows that if all the pieces fell into place and everyone would just listen to reason, he could pull together the greatest one-man circus the world has ever known. The book is especially apt this election year, as two wildly divergent go-getters battle each other for the opportunity to preside over one of the biggest circuses the world has ever known. A president's powers are limited, of course (although they've been increasing in bits and pieces and in entirely unconstitutional ways since John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798), but if I myself ran the circus and didn't have a pesky Congress or Supreme Court or political future to worry about... While I may be a crazy pinko f...
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