American Government 101 – a Review
As we are instructed in our government classes, the federal government is a government of limited, specifically enumerated powers. While the states have plenary authority to address a broad array of issues, the people and the states established the federal government and specified a limited number of things it can do.
As students of the Constitution know, the job of the federal government is to regulate immigration, coin money, raise and support armies, define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and make rules for the government and regulation of the national basketball association.
As students of the Constitution know, the job of the federal government is to regulate immigration, coin money, raise and support armies, define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and make rules for the government and regulation of the national basketball association.
posted by steve u. at 7/26/2007
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3 Comments:
You must be reading an earlier version of the Constitution, since it also include: grant voting rights to nonstates, facilitate ponzi schemes and Enron-style bookkeeping (for programs like social security), dictate the nature of vehicles that state governments can purchase for their fleets, incentivize states to require drivers to wear seatbelts, mandate employee wages and benefits, determine who can work, restrict free political speech, increase the price of food to keep wealthy farmers on the dole, subsidize healthcare (for children, the poor, the elderly and almost everyone else), run education and their related sports programs, and everything else that Congress wants to do.
Now remind me, what is the purpose of that Constitution? In a world where the ends justify the means, and where might makes right, they act like they don't need no stinking Constitution!
I always wondered about that clause in the Constitution. I know the founders were very intelligent, but knowing that there would be a national basketball association which would require regulation - they must have been inspired.
John, I loved your response. I think I'll be laughing the rest of the evening.
Steve, ... you're a lawyer, you should know that the concept of a limited federal government disappeared years ago, starting with Chief Justice Marshall's opinion on the "interstate commerce clause" in the 1820's, and continued with approval of all three federal branches with central pillars of the New Deal.
In _Hodel_, 1981, Justice Renquist said, "one of the greatest 'fictions' of our federal system is that Congress exercises only those powers delegated to it," and, "the manner in which this [Supreme] court has construed the Commerce Clause amply illustrates the extent of this fiction."
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