Help ratify the Liberty Amendment!

[migrendel]

I don't see how depriving the government of basic powers of taxation and economic development has anything to do with liberty. I guess they though the word was catchy.

I cannot understand how the states get the hubris to act in such an insubordinate fashion to the federal government. Our system is based upon the supremacy of federal law, and our weakest moments (e.g. the Civil War) have happened when the states were too powerful. The inability to generate revenue would produce profligate deficits that could not possibly support the defense expansion the conservatives so desperately want. With regard to a national sales tax, the excess tax money going into the economy will likely cause inflation, and in the longer term discourage spending as prices rise. Getting rid of progressive federal income taxation would be a catastrophe.

[migrendel]

It is illegal for any state, with the exception of Texas, to secede. That's why we sent troops to the South in the 1860s, if you recall.

I don't see how having an income tax violates the 4th Amendment, considering that IRS agents don't enter private homes without a warrant to conduct audits. They happen to send a notice which tells you the date and time. No one is frisked or has their stomach pumped in the process. The 16th Amendment has the same authority as law as any of the other amendments, including the one you cited. Since a necessary supermajority of the Congress and the states ratified it, it's in there. You can ignore if you like, but that doesn't change what the Constitution says.

I don't see how my allegiance to my country is affected by not writing a laissez-faire economic policy coupled with radical decentralization. Most Americans lost faith in states rights when states like yours used it to segregate people.

[migrendel]

The sections of the Constitution dealing with the expropriation of private property are in the Fifth Amendment, not the Fourth. That amendment deals with search and seizure rules.

[migrendel]

If you read Roe v. Wade, it was the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that made abortion legal.

[migrendel]

For a state to ban to abortion, it would violate a woman's liberty without due process.

[migrendel]

The reasoning why abortion is a constitutional right is somewhat complex, but for those of you who are open-minded enough to give the argument a read, and not preemptively issue moral condemnation.

We can all agree that citizenship is what guarantees you Constitutional rights. Citizenship is defined by the Fourteenth Amendment as beginning at birth or naturalization, so fetuses are not citizens, meaning they do not inherently have Constitutional rights.

If a legislature creates rights for fetuses, they are thus secondary to the Constitution as written. It is quite obvious that the Due Process Clause protects the life and liberty of citizens. Since fetuses are not citizens, they are not guaranteed a right to life. Women, as citizens, are entitled to their liberty, which by any reasonable interpretation extends to basic physical autonomy and reproductive liberty. Since this is Constitutionally mandated, it overrides any legislative rights fetuses might acquire. Also, it can logically be argued that denying women the right to make a choice about abortion can prevent them from exercising their political, economic, and social rights to the same extent as mankind. It can thus be said that they are denied the equal protection of the law.

I'd also like to note a glaring legal inaccuracy in cwelsch's post. The Griswold decision was based, as he said, in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, which are non-textual constructions. Roe was not based on a penumbraic theory. It was based on a text-based construction of the Fourteenth Amendment.

[migrendel]

Exactly, dustinasby. It protects a broad range of personal choices, including the abortion decision.