[TheAmazingIdiot]

Slavery is not an enumerated right, to control or to tax, for federal powers listed in the Constitution. Therefore it should fall to the states, or their respective citizens. A war was fought over this very issue. States lost. Get over it.

Functionally, Massachusetts Health Care Insurance Reform Law is similar to Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. One is state law, and the other one federal law. Questions were abound if PPACA was constitutional. SCOTUS said YES 5-4.

Quote: "Alternately, I can hope for a future non-Democrat court to actually read the constitution and overturn this recent decision."

Oh, and I believe the swing vote was Chief Justice John Roberts. Wasn't he a conservative justice, nominated by George W. Bush, after William Rehnquist passed? Facts are pesky things, aren't they?

[clarky07]

Actually it is. See the 13th amendment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni...

A war was fought over the issue, and we decided to add that particular issue to the constitution through the amendment process that the founders allowed for in the constitution. It turns out, that after the war, we didn't repeal the 10th. That's totally still there - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_S...

Facts are pesky things, aren't they?

And Reagan appointed Kennedy. What's your point?

I see you also skipped over the part where I'd be ok with amending the constitution to add it. I wouldn't support it, but I'd be ok with it if it actually passed.

[rdtsc]

> Slavery is not an enumerated right, to control or to tax, for federal powers listed in the Constitution.

So? It is not in a paper composed 200+ years ago that we somehow feel the need to worship and treat it like a set of magic tablets given to Moses on a mountain or something.

Aren't the citizens supposed to be able to change and update that as they see fit, isn't that even more in the spirit of Founding Fathers than say just to continuously point a 200+ year old paper

[bane]

Don't get too caught up in it. Fights over Constitutionally "enumerated" rights are simply code words for ignoring the 9th amendment. i.e. the framers of the Constitution knew that they could not possibly enumerate all rights from the get go and were bound to make mistakes (especially since most of the rights they were enumerating had not been traditionally recognized before).

The Framers did not intend that the first eight amendments be construed to exhaust the basic and fundamental rights.... I do not mean to imply that the .... Ninth Amendment constitutes an independent source of rights protected from infringement by either the States or the Federal Government....While the Ninth Amendment - and indeed the entire Bill of Rights - originally concerned restrictions upon federal power, the subsequently enacted Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States as well from abridging fundamental personal liberties. And, the Ninth Amendment, in indicating that not all such liberties are specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments, is surely relevant in showing the existence of other fundamental personal rights, now protected from state, as well as federal, infringement. In sum, the Ninth Amendment simply lends strong support to the view that the "liberty" protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments from infringement by the Federal Government or the States is not restricted to rights specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments. Cf. United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75, 94-95. - Justice Arthur Goldberg

[TheAmazingIdiot]

In all honesty, I was just arguing with a libertarian with a strong constitutionalist mindset. And he finally got 'it' with the

" In other news, I'm up far later than I want to be debating something I have almost no control over, with someone who describes himself as an idiot."

comment. I was doing this in the middle of designing a platform and motor for my 3d scanner.

Complete aside: I believe I can modify the source for MakerBot Scanner so it can scan rooms as well as individual objects. It'd be really spiffy to print panoramic pictures of a room. Call it an early work in progress. I'll publish soon-ish.

[clarky07]

In other news, I'm up far later than I want to be debating something I have almost no control over, with someone who describes himself as an idiot.

"Honey come to bed"

"I can't, somebody is wrong on the internet"