[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.