“The fourteenth amendment has not extended the rights and privileges of citizenship one iota. They are right where they always were.”
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or [...]
The United States Supreme court tells us their “case law firmly establishes Congress’ power to regulate purely local activities that are part of an economic ‘class of activities’ that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.” The question explored here is whether such “case law” is supported in any way by the history, text and [...]
James Ho in a Wall Street Journal op-ed repeats common misunderstandings over what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” under the Fourteenth Amendment was declared to mean by its primary framers, the United States Attorney General and the Supreme Court and concludes any effort by States to refuse citizenship to children born to undocumented aliens to [...]
I’m often asked if the United States as a nation was founded upon Christianity and the answer is clearly no because religion was not an object of concern delegated to national government by the member States who formed it. National government was formed with very few and limited objects such as war, uniform bankruptcy laws, [...]
I’m afraid overbearing domestic airport security is really not about serious domestic threats to airline safety but more about modern liberal political correctness that says profiling is wrong. Because profiling would be considered a greater tragedy then what occurred on 9/11 by Civil and Human Rights Activists, everyone is left to equally endure the humiliation [...]
Not intending to revisit what has already been written following the Coons/O’Donnell Senate debate over church and state under the First Amendment, I do though want correct an erroneous assertion that Jefferson’s use of the phrase “wall of separation between Church & State” is somehow improper or erroneous. The fact is there is nothing wrong [...]
The New Jersey Committee to Recall Robert Menendez v. Nina Wells addressed the question whether it is proper to recall a siting U.S. Senator by holding: The matter is ripe for adjudication and the text and history of the Federal Constitution, as well as the principles of the democratic system it created, do not allow [...]
“[T]here is no need to deceive ourselves as to what the original Second Amendment said and meant. Of course, properly understood, it is no limitation upon arms control by the states.”–Antoin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law (1997) I wanted to take the opportunity today to add some late commentary over [...]
Yesterday the Third Circuit ruled against the City of Hazleton’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance, which set out to fine landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and would have penalized companies that employed them. Additionally, tenants would have had to show proof they were citizens or lawful residents, register with the city and pay for [...]
Need proof the 39th Congress who debated and adopted the Fourteenth Amendment did not consider State laws of marriage to come under the amendment? Former rebel States under Reconstruction were required to frame new constitutions and have State statutes that conformed to the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Constitutions and questionable laws had to first [...]