Article 2, section 3: "He [The President] must... take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Article 2 also expresses that the President has power to head executive departments and delegate powers thereunto.

While you're at it, you might also want to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem . 'Ad hominem' is a particular type of invalid deduction. It's not a fancy Latin name for when you feel persecuted.

We're still waiting for how those "foregoing powers" or "all other powers" include a general police force.

Article 1, section 8 has a list of powers.

The proposition that it has no such power is supported by the old argument often heard, often repeated, and in this Court never assented to, that, when a question of the power of Congress arises, the advocate of the power must be able to place his finger on words which expressly grant it.

In other words, this argument was a boring cliche in 1884.

We know of no express authority to pass laws to punish theft or burglary of the treasury of the United States. Is there therefore no power in Congress to protect the treasury by punishing such theft and burglary?

You'd find this and probably 100 other establishing SCOTUS cases on even a brief Google foray into the limits of the Necessary and Proper Clause. Long story short: you still have to pay your income taxes.

From the Wikipedia article:

In 1789, while introducing to the House of Representatives nineteen draft Amendments, James Madison addressed what would become the Ninth Amendment as follows:

> It has been objected also against a Bill of Rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution.

Like Alexander Hamilton, Madison was concerned that enumerating various rights could "enlarge the powers delegated by the constitution." To attempt to solve this problem, Madison submitted this draft to Congress:

> The exceptions here or elsewhere in the constitution, made in favor of particular rights, shall not be so construed as to diminish the just importance of other rights retained by the people; or as to enlarge the powers delegated by the constitution; but either as actual limitations of such powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.

Maybe the constitution doesn't cover enough. Let's amend it.

We're not talking about theft or burglary of the treasury of the US.

The question is general police power.

> Long story short: you still have to pay your income taxes.

Huh? You should make sure that your canned text is relevant.

Here's an easy one - are there any limitations on the commerce power?

Did you read that page?

"An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.[1] Ad hominem reasoning is normally described as a logical fallacy.[2][3][4]"

You do it again here: "In particular, something doesn't become ad hominen because you feel insulted by it. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of your persecution complex."

Neither of your two posts contain any argument, only a (still unsupported) assertion about what the constitution says, and assertions of negative characteristics about me.

Your citation of Article 1, section 8, is an evasion on your part, as it shows that the constitution only authorizes laws to execute "the foregoing Powers". Or in short, Article 1, section 8 proves my claim that the government only has the legal power in the constitution as enumerated by the enumerated powers. You haven't shown the existence of this power either in the enumerated powers clause or elsewhere (in the amendments), and thus you haven't actually addressed my claim at all.

Article 2, section 3, merely requires the president to adhere to the requirements of these enumerated powers. Which is actually further support for my claim, not an undermining of it.

The fact is that these enumerated powers are very specific: "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;" shows that they are not so broad as to fit anything not mentioned in between the cracks. You can't say the government has the power to establish an Airline and Airports and Air Routes based on that enumeration, for instance.

You blithely quote the word "powers" but ignore that until you show where the constitution grants the power to maintain a standing police force, you haven't even addressed my argument.

You can't make an argument on the points. You have twice pretended like there's an argument to be made, and in the second time, effectively evaded the point and quoted irrelevancies as if it were an argument. I must conclude that you have no argument to make, which explains why you choose personal attack instead. Well, I'm done. You can post whatever you want to try and make me look bad. I don't are. Your doing so only serves to prove my point. Even if you managed to find an actual quote in the constitution that rebuts me completely, your twice choosing to engage in ad hominem rather than debate still means you lost.

So, I'm done. The sad thing is, this is typical of the intolerance for differing perspectives that is exhibited on Hacker News. I was making point where we had common ground-- but you don't care about that. You simply cannot tolerate the existence of someone who can articulate a different perspective. And so you attacked me.

I suspect people like you and the down vote brigade are a large reason why hacker news has become somewhat of a monoculture.

It's obvious why it's catnip to many HN readers; it suggests that the Constitution is a very simple computer program, and that anything the government does that you don't like is a bug in the interpretation of that program.

Unfortunately for this argument, you cannot look at any federal government action and match it up to the black-letter US Constitution while ignoring the two centuries of jurisprudence that put those actions in context. We are not, no matter what 'nirvana thinks, going to reset the federal government around his interpretation of the Constitution.

The danger is that the consequences of government sticking its fingers into almost everything will eventually become worse than the disruption that would be caused by a reset.

Do you think in this case what the FBI did is a legitimate exercise of federal power? If not, where do you find a limit to government power forbidding them from doing this? It's the same exercise that nirvana is engaged in: finding justification for excluding certain things from government power, when there is no longer any principled way of making that determination. Whether something becomes a law and is considered constitutional depends on the mood of Congress and the Supreme Court. Nothing more. In some cases well-grounded principles can be found. In most cases they cannot.

Under federal law, enforcing any laws that are not constitutionally enacted by federal employees, while armed, is a felony. This makes every TSA agent who is armed a felon. The unarmed ones are effectively felons as well due to the cumulative sentences for their crimes.

It doesn't matter that the congress and the president signed a law creating the TSA, under Mabury vs. Madison unconstitutional laws are null and void the moment they are passed. (which makes your lie about my position on Mabury obviously dishonest, but then, what should I expect from you?)

I'm unlikely to respond because you always post the same stuff, generally ad hominem, and you never defend your points. But your running around and engaging in ad hominem is apparently not embarrassing enough even when others point it out. You and the others doing the same thing destroyed HN, you've made rational discussion impossible.

Nirvana never claimed the government would obey the constitution as written - in fact, he claimed it wouldn't. Your post completely ducks nirvana's question while mocking him and misrepresenting his views.

His question, again: "there are many such crimes that many liberals disagree with: such as the patriot act, the kim dotcom fiasco, airport porno scanners, domestic spying of all kinds, the drug war, even in states that have legalized it, etc. how do you propose to fix this?"

Take for instance the drug war. I don't agree with the drug war. I think criminalization of marijuana is terrible policy. But is it unconstitutional? The Constitution provided a framework within which the citizens of the US were able to elect representatives who passed laws that outlawed marijuana.

"Even in States that have legalized it"? That's an objection the Constitution explicitly presages: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby".

I re-re-read 'nirvana's point, and I think my interpretation is valid and that I haven't misrepresented him.

'nirvana has adopted the idea that much of what the government is doing is illegal because it isn't spelled out in the Constitution (in this one case, because the power to establish a federal police force isn't one of the Enumerated Powers of Congress). That's not how the Constitution works.

Could you be more specific, then, about what you're asking me? How do I propose to fix what? The drug war?

For example, many liberals believe that Jim Crow laws or laws giving special privileges to straight married couples (but not gay married couples) should not be permitted even with popular electoral support. I.e., liberals often consider "the citizens of the US were able to elect representatives who X" to be an invalid justification for policy X.

The question is, what principle are liberals using to come up with views like this? Another question in the same line of thinking is: is there a principle beyond "I like/dislike this policy" which the courts can use to invalidate laws? (Note that appealing to court precedents and reinterpretations of the constitution doesn't really answer this, since the court can always re-reinterpret or make a new precedent.)

[1] I hate phrasing it this way, since the feelings it generates ("I {love/hate} liberals SOOOO MUCH") reduce everyone's IQ by about 15 pts.

Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

I just don't see where you're going. I'm interested, but I'm not following.

If not, you must have some underlying principle that tells you Plessy was incorrect. Or, somewhat tangential to constitutionality, you might have an underlying belief as to what constitutes a legitimate function of the government (e.g., perhaps you believe that regulating same-sex acts is not such a function).

The question is, what is that underlying principle (or set of principles)?

This is what Nirvana attempted to ask, while unfortunately getting bogged down in other far more boring matters.

So, I don't have to reason from first principles to arrive at the conclusion that the 14th Amendment makes "separate but equal" unconstitutional. Brown v. Board lays out the argument that it does. I can't best the argument here in a message board post.

Do you think Brown v. Board is one of the cases SCOTUS got wrong? Genuinely curious.

In particular, I dispute the "disparate impact" theory underlying the court's reasoning, namely that segregation does not qualify as equal protection because it is is disproportionately harmful to blacks.

I don't think disproportionate harm is required or relevant. My first principle is that equal protection is violated when gov_decision(circumstances, race1) != gov_decision(circumstances, race2).

Because of this, it would be relevant for me to cite Clarence Thomas in Missouri v Jenkins: http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/515/70/case.html But since Brown v. Board doesn't take this same first principle, citing them wouldn't help you understand my views (even if I agree with the outcome).

Presumably, if I knew your first principles (and if we are both completely rational, and you are intellectually consistent), I could predict your opinion on any given case. And that's the question Nirvana was asking - what are your first principles?

I'm not sure I see where you're going. Thomas' reading of Brown v. Board of Ed seems identical to mine:

Public school systems that separated blacks and provided them with superior educational resources--making blacks "feel" superior to whites sent to lesser schools--would violate the Fourteenth Amendment, whether or not the white students felt stigmatized [...]

[...]

Regardless of the relative quality of the schools, segregation violated the Constitution because the State classified students based on their race.

But further: the circumstances of these cases are wildly different. Brown v. Board of Ed was about active, de jure segregation of black people and white people. Missouri v. Jenkins was about a school district that became majority-black as a result of white flight.

Kennedy's concurrence was illuminating: it seems to allege that the plaintiff and defendant in this case (the students and the KCMO school district) were colluding: an accident of venue was the only reason KCMO's school district was named defendant, and the actual, unnammed, shadow defendant was the state of Missouri, which was being coerced into funding an otherwise wildly unfundable mandate to create extravagant inner city schools by judicial fiat.

Thomas, Kennedy, and Rehnquist all put heavy attention on the circumstances of this case, that the federal judiciary (a) probably can't impose state taxes by fiat as a backdoor to legislation, and (b) clearly can't do so under the auspices that demographic "segregation" was equivalent to legal segregation. That all makes sense to me.

The FBI, air traffic control, copyright extensions: these are all well supported by legislation. They were not imposed as a backdoor by fiat by an activist court.

I'm not yummyfajitas nor am I speaking for him.

I believe he's looking for a principle somewhere that links people's moral outrage and the law. People either have their principles or they have the law. If people are having an argument about what is moral the law is irrelevant, if they're having an argument about what is moral the law is irrelevant.

A consistent argument would be either legal or moral. Any argument that treats the law as having moral weight is assigning some kind of quasi-sacred status to it.

Either the PATRIOT Act is legal therefore it is right is an argument that has some weight however tiny XOR it doesn't.

Why do you think

But it's not just "the Supreme Court decided it and thus it is so" (although when push comes to shove...). It's also that the SCOTUS decisions are a hint book to arguments like this.

They're just some political appointees who're mostly very, very smart. The important bit is the political appointees though. If you just assume Republican appointees vote Republican and Democrats Democrat on any given policy position you don't go far wrong. What moral weight can that have?

1. Is the federal government empowered to make any law not expressly forbidden by the Constitution?

2. Are there any laws that the states are allowed to make for their own people and territory without being overridden by the federal government?

The crux of your comments seems to lie in a practical argument — it's useful to have the government doing this stuff. nirvana's argument is strictly Constitutional, and is not interested in any conveniences that might be offered by bending the law.

(For the record, I'm not 100% in agreement with either side here. I'm just trying to synthesize what I see as the difference in where you two are coming from.)

As for (2), the Constitution settles this directly; laws enacted by the legislative branch of the federal government are the "supreme law of the land".

You want to argue about what nirvana thinks--well, nirvana thinks the FBI is unconstitutional. I believe I've shown this to be black-and-white, read-the-document wrong. The power of the executive to enforce the law is explicitly authorized. Okay, maybe there are some interesting questions about the proper scope of the Commerce Clause, but why are we framing this debate according to the terms of someone who has no clue what he's talking about?

No you haven't. You provided two quotes from the constitution, referring to the limited powers I was talking about, and thus your quotes completely support my position. I've pointed this out already.

This means either you know that you've failed and all your interested in is adhominem-- which means you're incapable of making an argument here. Or you're simply not bright enough to comprehend the point I'm making, which I've illuminated several times.

The problem is, you can't be bothered to read the constitution, and what the constitution says doesn't really matter to your ideology, so you're just going to throw out unsupported nonsense, along with your personal attacks, and act like you've smugly shown me to be wrong.

You have utterly failed. Every time you characterize me, its because you can't rebut my point.

And you can't rebut my point because my point is correct. Its correct because I've actually read the constitution.

You should try it sometime.

I'm unlikely to respond because you always post the same stuff, generally ad hominem, and you never defend your points. But your running around and engaging in ad hominem is apparently not embarrassing enough even when others point it out. You and the others doing the same thing destroyed HN, you've made rational discussion impossible.

Also, stop downvoting anyone who contradicts you. To downvote everyone not on your side is against the spirit of this site.

You have still failed to provide a single quote from the constitution that supports your position. Your assertions here are not supported by the quotes you did provide, nor any other place in the constitution. I have also cited the enumerated powers clause which would be completely unnecessary if what you say is true. Since nobody is debating the existence of the enumerated powers clause, your asset ions are nonsense -- in fact, rebutted by my very first post in this topic.

The quotes you did provide, prove my claim. That government is empowered to pass such laws are necessary as to exercise the enumerated powers... and no more.

Until you can find the power in the enumerated powers, or in an a subsequently passed amendment, just asserting you've proven your position over and over again is kinda silly.

This document was written to be understandable by anyone. IF you read it, instead of quoting lines taken out of context you found online, you'll find that it is very clear on the matter.

I must conclude that you know I'm right, but me being right goes against the requirements of your ideology and so you can't admit I'm right and you must stick to repeating your assertion. I'll save you time. You can just stop replying here and save me the time of having to write this very same rebuttal once again.

The constitution literally makes reference to the "foregoing powers, and all other Powers" being the province of Congressional law. All other powers, man. All of them. Including the executive's power to, quote, "execute law."

I'm not even sure what to do here. Neither of these are correct. But quoting the bare text of the Constitution doesn't even work. Next you'll assert that black is white.

and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States,

or in any Department or Officer thereof."

Whatever, I'm done here--repeating myself until I'm understood is not my idea of fun.

This clearly states that the powers must be explicitly vested by the Constitution. They can't be made up out of thin air. The state governments != the Government of the United States nor are they Departments or Officers thereof. This passage clearly requires that all federal powers be explicitly granted in the Constitution, though they need not only come from Article 1. Either I'm ignorant of some amendment that grants the powers you're talking about (like the power to have an FDA) or you inadequately understand the meaning of the phrase "vested by". At the end of the day, all of this stuff is stuffed under "regulate interstate commerce" and it's clearly a bastardization of both the word and spirit of the law. If you want broader federal powers, you must amend the constitution, period, and congress has deceitfully snaked its way out of that over and over thanks to the "legislation from the bench" at the Supreme Court that has backed them up at the expense of our constitution's integrity.

Additionally, if you want to learn about all of the ways the FBI has broken the law throughout its existence, I'm talking about stuff outside of any conceivable constitutional allowance, I highly recommend reading this recent book on its history (http://www.amazon.com/Enemies-History-FBI-Tim-Weiner/dp/1400...)

Yup. The federal power I'm talking about is in article II, section 3, the power of the President to "faithfully execute" the law. Federal police is normally understood to be "necessary and proper" w.r.t. this, just as local police is an agent of execution for local law.

I'd be satisfied with a quote from any of the enumerated powers or any of the amendments or anywhere else in the constitution, that explicitly grants the powers in question.

I think their real issue is that they don't understand the constitution because they have never read it, or they were taught that it allows unlimited power, or they want it to allow unlimited power.

I miscalculated that thinking a thread were we have an example of abuse of powers not granted in the enumerated clause would get them to see that.

1. He made no arguments, he just asserted a different conclusion. Which is the equivalent of saying "you're wrong, jackass!" Is that not ad hominem? "Your wrong" is not "substantial issues with the argument itself". (and why would you think you could just say that and expect anyone to believe it when the comment is right there for everyone to see?)

2. Do you want hacker news to be a place where "your wrong, jackass" type posts are acceptable? "Your wrong" is fine- even if it fails to make an argument, I don't mind.

But name calling makes debate difficult-- notice how he has managed to completely derail the topic of debate (which was not about the constitution, but about what can be done when the government is shutting down hip hop sites.)

The original post made an observation about a way they perceived nirvana posts to HN, then gave substantial reasons why they disagreed with him. There was no aggression tha I could read, only disagreement.

Nirvana is wrong that the original post was the equivalent of "you're wrong, jackass". There were no insults given, this is entirely something that nirvana has read into the post and that isn't there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Carolene_Produ...

Please stop misusing that term.