That'd probably be a good idea, just by itself.

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.

Only if a case is brought before it does SCOTUS have jurisdiction. As for the federal government's duty to the people, it is limited to exactly and only what is written in the Constitution.

If that's what they want to do, then they're free to do it. I just want them to follow the process.

That's what you're missing: the federal government has very limited powers and is only allowed to do certain things. If the people want it to do other things then the Constitution must be amended to give the federal government that power or else the Constitution must be replaced with another document.

This is where you're wrong. If it is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution then it is off the table.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Then let's re-write it!

But what you're not understanding here is the intended, very limited, role of the federal government. The issue here is the role of the federal government. If the people want the federal government to have more power than the Constitution gives it then they must either amend the Constitution or replace it with a new document.

It doesn't matter whether they're important, it matters whether they're Constitutional. They're not. The founders rightly put a process in place for the people to amend the Constitution as necessary. So, if the people want the federal government to have the power to establish agencies like the CDC, FDA and USDA, they need to amend the Constitution or replace it with a new document. FOLLOW THE DAMNED PROCESS!

I don't have a problem if the people replace the Constitution with an entirely new document. I do, however, care about the federal government usurping for itself powers the Constitution (and, by extension, the people) didn't give it.

Again, if the people want to do that, I don't have a problem with it. But it must be the people that do it and not the federal government.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

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Liberate the world one mind at a time.

Subsidize freedom with some profit.

Boy, how I'd love to. I mean, we now have 200 years of data to determine what works and what doesn't, and certainly plenty of blogs/forums with great ideas and willing to give input.

One pretty good suggestion I have heard is that the Const. should be written largely by those who will be governed, not by the class who will do the governing.

Then, if the technicalities of putting in now necessary agencies and whatnot is the big sticking point, then, we should do it, if it makes these strict Constittutionalists happier. It'll be unfortunate that to contain all the things government does from A to Z would really ruin the concise nature and elegance of the original, but so be it.

As I've said before, I care more about effectiveness and efficiency than size. Government should be as big as it needs to be to accomplish what the people require it to do.

Meh. I think you're lamenting a horse that's so far out of the barn, it's approaching Zaire. Government began expanding its powers almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified.

We value different things. Spirit vs. letter. But, okay, if you thnk it's more important to make the Constitution as complex and thick as the Tax Code, get to it.

We gave it to ourselves in 1781, what's the difference?

But, we'll compromise. Perhaps wording that builds in some flexibiity in terms of executive agency/program/policy creation that requires Congressional approval. This ratified by the states stuff is really laborious and should be reserved for big time Amendments.

How nitpicky should this document be? We shouldn't have to have 50 states' approval for the President to be allowed to wipe himself.....

I agree. Again, I have to assert that it's the SCOTUS'S job to determine legislative and executive compliance with the Const, and the fact that none of the agencies and programs I mentioned have been even challenged on Constititionality leads me to figure that it's considered well within the purview of those branches.

Overall, I stand by my assessment that if it's not explicitly DENIED in the Constitution, it's allowable.

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.

Ah, thank you, THAT'S the term I was thinking of.

Strict Constitutionalists seem to want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Most people that want massive reductions in government don't realize just how much the government really does for us and how disrputive, chaotic and burdensome life might get. If we hacked everything back to 1781, we would become a third world nation overnight.

Most people don't want that, and it's no wonder proposals to hack remain on the fringe.

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.

To which I reply that enumerated authority is enumerated authority. It is not 'necessary' or 'proper' for our tax dollars to be spent for works of 'art.' That said, I took my own advise and began to read the debates yet again. I am up to June 21st. I will return upon completing my reading.

Lastly...you can rewrite it. There is a mechanism for just such a thing. Of course, it has proven more difficult and has been previously attempted without success. It is easier to amend than to call a constitutional convention.

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The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! - Frederick Bastiat

Easier, perhaps, but if the entire government is as wretchedly broken as is claimed, here, then nothing short of a new Constitutional Congress is neccessary. The last 200 years of amazing wealth, propserity, progress and security have been a complete illusion, apparently, acheived in spite of our own government.

Personally, I'm pretty happy with 90% of what our government does, and I suspect that all of this anti-government rhetoric is stemming from a fairly small mumber of particular policies or instances that probably need some fixing. Libertarians strike me as wanting to demolish the whole house because the roof leaks.

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.

Then of course there's that whole "necessary and proper" thing being specifically limited to the federal government carrying out its enumerated powers.

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Really, all this splitting of hairs is getting out of hand. These agencies are HERE. All these programs EXIST. Done. Decades of performance and precident behind them. Nobody but a few of you seem to have problems with them. And, you're really, really stretching to find ways to invalidate them.

If you want to talk about specific program cutbacks, rather than talking vaguely about slashing and burning the whole government as a monolithic, evil entity, that's great.

But come on, turning the clock back to 1781 is just too silly to even discuss with a straight face. If this is truly what libertarianism espouses, then ther're no point in even discussing it.

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There is no sig. There never was a sig. The sig is a lie.