Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
It's interesting that in demanding an answer you refuse, in advance, to accept the proper one.
If the "proper one" is in dispute, and I join that dispute in my opinion, therefor believing that the "proper one" is improper, how am I somehow required to disavow my own argument before I can argue?
Besides, I don't know WTF you're talking about.
That the Commerce Clause has been subject to liberal interpretation isn't really the issue...it is what it is...and there's a massive body of legislative interpretation that is now part of our society.
It is not an issue in the Heller case because it was not invoked. That the Commerce Clause has been subject to liberal mis-interpretation is most definitely an issue. And much of that "liberal interpretation" can and should be struck down. Stare decisis is binding on the lower courts (though even they don't always abide by it). But it is not binding on the SCOTUS. SCOTUS has reversed "interpretations" just as the "liberal interpretations" were reversals of original understanding from the founding through most of the 19t century. Those original interpretations began to be chipped away by progressive legislators and judges especially from FDR on. They have transformed the Constitution as written (and intended) into a shadow structure of what it originally was, and whose "meaning" is ad hoc determination dependant on the preference of politicians and judges. It no longer constrains them as it was meant to do, but gives them the cover of authority as they twist it to their desired ends. That is what is now part of our society. And I contend that is the major reason that our governmental "system is broken". And why we are, as a nation, steeped in unsustainable debt, and have to constantly resort to tweaking and manipulating and raising debt ceilings and taxes, and why the Federal Government is now a top-down progenitor of law, regulation, and fixer of societies ills. And I believe that is the "proper answer" and will not disavow it.
Even in Heller the most conservative members of the SCOTUS appear by my reckoning to affirm the Federal Government's power to regulate firearms with some limits.
-spence
|
Where in Heller is the Federal Government power to regulate firearms affirmed? Heller was not a suit against the Federal Government. It was against a D.C. gun ban. And even I would not dispute that the Federal Government has the power to regulate the interstate transport of guns, as well that of actual interstate commerce. But, again, and again, the distinction between "inter" and "intra" should not be muddied into the same instrument. But Heller was not about the interstate transport of guns. The majority decision was against a local gun ban, not a federal one. And the concession that there might be restrictions on certain types of "arms" (to be decided by future cases if they arise), is not taken out of state hands by Heller and delivered into Federal domain.