Anybody getting tired of the presidential campaign? I have an idea: for the final week of this affair, since we all know who the two candidates are, instead of using their full names let's just call them by their initials.
That way, when we talk about the political leanings of the ladies on "The View," we can say "Elisabeth Hasselbeck is voting for J.M.!"
And on the other hand, we can also say "Joy Behar clearly supports B.O.!"
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
State of the state constitutions
Earlier this week I was in Chicago, and the political talk, besides the Presidential election, centered around whether or not Illinois voters should approve forming a new constitutional convention. That got me to pondering how it is that I think of the U.S. Constitution a lot, but I almost never think of the state ones.
I'm not alone. Writes Professor Lawrence M. Friedman, "(L)egal scholarship does not pay much attention to the state constitutions. Legal education ignores them almost entirely. So does the public" (American Law in the 20th Century, 2002, p. 344.) Small wonder, because as Friedman goes on to note, "(State constitutions) lack the magic of the federal Constitution. They symbolize nothing in particular. Nobody gets choked up at the thought of these documents. Nobody preserves them in shrines under glass" (p. 345).
The most interesting thing I've ever seen on state constitutions is actually a table appended to an essay by Donald S. Lutz contained in the book Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995) edited by Sanford Levinson. This table, on pages 248-249, provides seven bits of information on each state's constitution. The three data sets of most interest to me are the number of constitutions each state has had in its history, the year each state's current constitution took effect, and the length of each constitution prior to amendment. (The information was current at it's compilation in 1991).
Let me briefly make a point about Illinois, since it is their consideration of a constitutional convention that got me started on this. The present constitution in that state went into effect in 1971, and it's rather remarkable that Illinois voters gave it a thumbs up. I say that because according to Friedman (pp. 344-345), seven states held constitutional conventions at about the same time as Illinois, and in five of those seven the voters shot the finished work down. (The states besides Illinois were Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Arkansas. Friedman states that Hawaii was the other state in which a new constitution drafted in the 1960s was approved, but that doesn't match the data in the Lutz table, and the Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau website indicates the fiftieth state has had only one constitution, subsequently amended, which went into effect in 1959.) So before Illinois voters authorize a new constitutional convention, they should reflect on how likely it is--based on the experiences of other states--that a convention's hard work could be rendered fruitless by voter disapproval.
If you had to guess which states have had the most constitutions, I'll bet you'd say they were in the South, because the southern states had to draft new constitutions after the Civil War. Well you'd be right--there are nine states that have had five or more constitutions and all are in Dixie except Pennsylvania. Louisiana leads with eleven constitutions; my Georgia is second with ten of them.
At the other end of the spectrum, nineteen states figured they got it right the first time, including Massachusetts with its 1780 document still holding court. (And yes, it's a bit archaic: check out this provision from Chapter II, Article 1: "There shall be a supreme executive magistrate, who shall be styled, The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and whose title shall be -- His Excellency." Can you imagine a Boston Globe reporter calling Mitt Romney that when he held the office?)
I was most interested, however, in the line in Lutz's table that has the number of words in each state's current constitution, prior to amendment. The original articles of the U.S. Constitution, contain 4,300 words; even with amendments it still contains fewer than eight thousand words (Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography, 2005, p. xi.). Amar calls that "notable brevity," but the state constitutions are far from that. The average one has 18,300 words.
Okay, so here's another quiz: which states do you think have the longest constitutions? If you'd asked me before I looked this up, I'd have guessed the biggest states have the most bombastic constitutions. It would make sense that a New York or a California would need the most lengthy documents to cover all contingencies among such vast populations, right?
Or not. Actually, the four states that have constitutions of over thirty thousand words are not population giants: Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Alabama has the most lengthy constitution, 65,400 words--three and a half times longer than the average such document!
As to why Alabama's constitution is so blasted long, it doesn't take too much nosing around in it to see that this is because it contains a lot of minutiae other states would just put in their regular legislative code. Check out section 86 of the Alabama Constitution:
"The legislature shall pass such penal laws as it may deem expedient to suppress the evil practice of dueling."
Or section 267:
"The legislature shall not have power to change the location of the state university, or the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, or the Alabama Schools for the Deaf and Blind, or the Alabama Girls' Industrial School, as now established by law, except upon a vote of two-thirds of the legislature taken by yeas and nays and entered upon the journals."
Riveting stuff, huh? In fairness to the folks just west of me, their constitution is now better than a century old; I doubt if Alabama had a constitutional convention today the delegates would produce something longer than could reasonably be read during halftime of the Alabama-Auburn football game, an annual event which now basically takes the place of dueling in the Yellowhammer State.
Vermont has the shortest constitution; the unamended document is a quick 5,200 words. I didn't see anything there about moving schools or dueling. Or even about maple syrup.
I'm not alone. Writes Professor Lawrence M. Friedman, "(L)egal scholarship does not pay much attention to the state constitutions. Legal education ignores them almost entirely. So does the public" (American Law in the 20th Century, 2002, p. 344.) Small wonder, because as Friedman goes on to note, "(State constitutions) lack the magic of the federal Constitution. They symbolize nothing in particular. Nobody gets choked up at the thought of these documents. Nobody preserves them in shrines under glass" (p. 345).
The most interesting thing I've ever seen on state constitutions is actually a table appended to an essay by Donald S. Lutz contained in the book Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995) edited by Sanford Levinson. This table, on pages 248-249, provides seven bits of information on each state's constitution. The three data sets of most interest to me are the number of constitutions each state has had in its history, the year each state's current constitution took effect, and the length of each constitution prior to amendment. (The information was current at it's compilation in 1991).
Let me briefly make a point about Illinois, since it is their consideration of a constitutional convention that got me started on this. The present constitution in that state went into effect in 1971, and it's rather remarkable that Illinois voters gave it a thumbs up. I say that because according to Friedman (pp. 344-345), seven states held constitutional conventions at about the same time as Illinois, and in five of those seven the voters shot the finished work down. (The states besides Illinois were Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Arkansas. Friedman states that Hawaii was the other state in which a new constitution drafted in the 1960s was approved, but that doesn't match the data in the Lutz table, and the Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau website indicates the fiftieth state has had only one constitution, subsequently amended, which went into effect in 1959.) So before Illinois voters authorize a new constitutional convention, they should reflect on how likely it is--based on the experiences of other states--that a convention's hard work could be rendered fruitless by voter disapproval.
If you had to guess which states have had the most constitutions, I'll bet you'd say they were in the South, because the southern states had to draft new constitutions after the Civil War. Well you'd be right--there are nine states that have had five or more constitutions and all are in Dixie except Pennsylvania. Louisiana leads with eleven constitutions; my Georgia is second with ten of them.
At the other end of the spectrum, nineteen states figured they got it right the first time, including Massachusetts with its 1780 document still holding court. (And yes, it's a bit archaic: check out this provision from Chapter II, Article 1: "There shall be a supreme executive magistrate, who shall be styled, The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and whose title shall be -- His Excellency." Can you imagine a Boston Globe reporter calling Mitt Romney that when he held the office?)
I was most interested, however, in the line in Lutz's table that has the number of words in each state's current constitution, prior to amendment. The original articles of the U.S. Constitution, contain 4,300 words; even with amendments it still contains fewer than eight thousand words (Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography, 2005, p. xi.). Amar calls that "notable brevity," but the state constitutions are far from that. The average one has 18,300 words.
Okay, so here's another quiz: which states do you think have the longest constitutions? If you'd asked me before I looked this up, I'd have guessed the biggest states have the most bombastic constitutions. It would make sense that a New York or a California would need the most lengthy documents to cover all contingencies among such vast populations, right?
Or not. Actually, the four states that have constitutions of over thirty thousand words are not population giants: Alabama, Louisiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Alabama has the most lengthy constitution, 65,400 words--three and a half times longer than the average such document!
As to why Alabama's constitution is so blasted long, it doesn't take too much nosing around in it to see that this is because it contains a lot of minutiae other states would just put in their regular legislative code. Check out section 86 of the Alabama Constitution:
"The legislature shall pass such penal laws as it may deem expedient to suppress the evil practice of dueling."
Or section 267:
"The legislature shall not have power to change the location of the state university, or the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, or the Alabama Schools for the Deaf and Blind, or the Alabama Girls' Industrial School, as now established by law, except upon a vote of two-thirds of the legislature taken by yeas and nays and entered upon the journals."
Riveting stuff, huh? In fairness to the folks just west of me, their constitution is now better than a century old; I doubt if Alabama had a constitutional convention today the delegates would produce something longer than could reasonably be read during halftime of the Alabama-Auburn football game, an annual event which now basically takes the place of dueling in the Yellowhammer State.
Vermont has the shortest constitution; the unamended document is a quick 5,200 words. I didn't see anything there about moving schools or dueling. Or even about maple syrup.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
On a clear night, you can cross state lines to see Uranus
"He (Obama) voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money? --John McCain at last night's debate.
At least that's what I think he said. I was playing that drinking game where you take a swig every time McCain says "my friends" so I may have been a bit out of my head by the time this matter came up.
If McCain and Obama had been debating purely for my benefit, the Arizona Senator would have, at this point, turned to the Chicagoan and said, "Senator Obama, you taught Constitutional law at an elite law school. Could you please tell us where, in your opinion, the Constitution--which only grants the federal government enumerated powers--gives you or anyone in Congress authority to dedicate funds to a local planetarium?"
I would have been fascinated, but I imagine the folks who have called it the dullest debate ever would have been even more nonplussed. (Here, by the way, is some background on the Adler Planetarium projector.)
And I don't have to do a lot of research to figure out what part of the Constitution Obama would have pointed to. Any time there is anything done by Congress that seems out of the realm of what they are technically allowed to do, it is a manifestation of the Commerce Clause, Article I, section 8:
"The Congress shall have Power *** To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
There is a long and somewhat acrimonious history concerning this provision, which I'll try to sum up in a couple of sentences. For years, the Supreme Court construed this clause quite narrowly, even striking down efforts by Congress to end child labor and establish a minimum wage, see Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918) and Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923). This type of judicial activism didn't go over well with Franklin Roosevelt, and when he was elected President he replaced Justices as they retired with men more friendly to New Deal ideals. The decisive victory in this battle came in 1942, when in Wickard v. Filburn (317 U.S. 111) the Court ruled that the contours of the Commerce Clause could even extend to corn grown by a farmer for his own use since the cumulative effects if lots of farmers did that would have a broad effect on interstate commerce. Although there have been a few cases since then where the Court has tried to pull in the reins a little, that's basically where we stand now, Congress can pass legislation under the authority of its power to regulate commerce "among the several states" even if the interstate commerce aspects are pretty remote.
I should mention that one obvious benefit to a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause is that it was this provision of the Constitution--rather than the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection--that Congress leaned on in the sixties when it passed the Civil Rights Act. Thus, when the bigots who ran the now gone Heart of Atlanta Motel--just a couple of miles from where I write this--argued that it was their business and they could so decline to give rooms to African-American travelers, the Supreme Court pointed out that lodgings in downtown Atlanta adjacent to a pair of Interstate highways obviously serve mostly people from outside Georgia. And so in 1964, Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (379 U.S. 241) put one more deserved nail into the coffin of American segregation. (A great book to read on this is Richard C. Cortner's Civil Rights and Public Accommodations: The Heart of Atlanta Motel and McClung Cases, 2001).
Which brings us back to the Adler Planetarium. Obviously it gets a lot of visitors from other states. I went to their website to see if there happened to be any figures on just how many folks from the other forty-nine states visit, and while I didn't find that, I found that they already have up a statement about McCain's comments. (May I just add as someone who was born and raised in the great City of Chicago that the Republican did not lose any votes over this? Never mind simply voting for Obama, the staff at Adler is probably preparing to name a constellation after him.)
Anyway, if you think that it's a bit absurd that the power of Congress can be argued to extend over a projector at a planetarium just because the place gets out of state visitors, I have a little story to tell you. Not long ago at my petting zoo, the USDA inspector paid her annual visit. She's a delightful woman, not one of those dreaded big, bad bureaucrats. We got to chatting about how my little place, which has only friendly domestic animals, is required to have a regular USDA inspection, while over in South Carolina, where the state laws concerning keeping exotic wild animals are rather lax, people literally have ferocious lions on their property and are not subject to any federal oversight. Why not? It's because my petting zoo is open to the public and people visit from around the country, while the South Carolina lion keepers are private landowners who don't open their premises to admission paying guests.
So if you have a petting zoo open for business with friendly goats, you get visited by the USDA, but if you keep a nasty lion on your private property, you don't see the feds. And this is all because of the Commerce Clause. (This assumes, of course, that the lion owner isn't in violation of any other U.S. law in keeping his cat.)
Let me close by mentioning another thing that occurred to me when McCain made his comment. You know the phrase everything old is new again? Would you believe the matter of whether federal money should be used for something like the Adler Planetarium's mission has actually come up before? A former colleague of Obama's on the law faculty of the University of Chicago, the late, great, David P. Currie, told briefly in The Constitution in Congress: The Jeffersonians 1801-1829 the story of how early in the nineteenth century Congress considered a proposal for the federal government to build an observatory. Citing a House committee's 1813 report, Currie mused, "The United States, if the committee had its way, were going into the business of astronomy" (p. 310). Currie goes on to ponder whether this could be sanctioned under the Commerce Clause--after all, using an observatory to establish the positions of heavenly bodies could be a help to navigation, which is directly related to commerce--but he also suggests that perhaps the power of Congress "to fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" (Art. I Sec. 8) might come into play. Currie somewhat cops out on the matter, ending his discussion with "Would it have been constitutional? Figure it out for yourself" (p. 312).
Oh those wacky University of Chicago law school professors. They're either asking you for help to figure out if an observatory is constitutional, or asking for your vote so they can, through their legislative or executive efforts, assert that it is.
At least that's what I think he said. I was playing that drinking game where you take a swig every time McCain says "my friends" so I may have been a bit out of my head by the time this matter came up.
If McCain and Obama had been debating purely for my benefit, the Arizona Senator would have, at this point, turned to the Chicagoan and said, "Senator Obama, you taught Constitutional law at an elite law school. Could you please tell us where, in your opinion, the Constitution--which only grants the federal government enumerated powers--gives you or anyone in Congress authority to dedicate funds to a local planetarium?"
I would have been fascinated, but I imagine the folks who have called it the dullest debate ever would have been even more nonplussed. (Here, by the way, is some background on the Adler Planetarium projector.)
And I don't have to do a lot of research to figure out what part of the Constitution Obama would have pointed to. Any time there is anything done by Congress that seems out of the realm of what they are technically allowed to do, it is a manifestation of the Commerce Clause, Article I, section 8:
"The Congress shall have Power *** To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."
There is a long and somewhat acrimonious history concerning this provision, which I'll try to sum up in a couple of sentences. For years, the Supreme Court construed this clause quite narrowly, even striking down efforts by Congress to end child labor and establish a minimum wage, see Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918) and Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 (1923). This type of judicial activism didn't go over well with Franklin Roosevelt, and when he was elected President he replaced Justices as they retired with men more friendly to New Deal ideals. The decisive victory in this battle came in 1942, when in Wickard v. Filburn (317 U.S. 111) the Court ruled that the contours of the Commerce Clause could even extend to corn grown by a farmer for his own use since the cumulative effects if lots of farmers did that would have a broad effect on interstate commerce. Although there have been a few cases since then where the Court has tried to pull in the reins a little, that's basically where we stand now, Congress can pass legislation under the authority of its power to regulate commerce "among the several states" even if the interstate commerce aspects are pretty remote.
I should mention that one obvious benefit to a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause is that it was this provision of the Constitution--rather than the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection--that Congress leaned on in the sixties when it passed the Civil Rights Act. Thus, when the bigots who ran the now gone Heart of Atlanta Motel--just a couple of miles from where I write this--argued that it was their business and they could so decline to give rooms to African-American travelers, the Supreme Court pointed out that lodgings in downtown Atlanta adjacent to a pair of Interstate highways obviously serve mostly people from outside Georgia. And so in 1964, Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (379 U.S. 241) put one more deserved nail into the coffin of American segregation. (A great book to read on this is Richard C. Cortner's Civil Rights and Public Accommodations: The Heart of Atlanta Motel and McClung Cases, 2001).
Which brings us back to the Adler Planetarium. Obviously it gets a lot of visitors from other states. I went to their website to see if there happened to be any figures on just how many folks from the other forty-nine states visit, and while I didn't find that, I found that they already have up a statement about McCain's comments. (May I just add as someone who was born and raised in the great City of Chicago that the Republican did not lose any votes over this? Never mind simply voting for Obama, the staff at Adler is probably preparing to name a constellation after him.)
Anyway, if you think that it's a bit absurd that the power of Congress can be argued to extend over a projector at a planetarium just because the place gets out of state visitors, I have a little story to tell you. Not long ago at my petting zoo, the USDA inspector paid her annual visit. She's a delightful woman, not one of those dreaded big, bad bureaucrats. We got to chatting about how my little place, which has only friendly domestic animals, is required to have a regular USDA inspection, while over in South Carolina, where the state laws concerning keeping exotic wild animals are rather lax, people literally have ferocious lions on their property and are not subject to any federal oversight. Why not? It's because my petting zoo is open to the public and people visit from around the country, while the South Carolina lion keepers are private landowners who don't open their premises to admission paying guests.
So if you have a petting zoo open for business with friendly goats, you get visited by the USDA, but if you keep a nasty lion on your private property, you don't see the feds. And this is all because of the Commerce Clause. (This assumes, of course, that the lion owner isn't in violation of any other U.S. law in keeping his cat.)
Let me close by mentioning another thing that occurred to me when McCain made his comment. You know the phrase everything old is new again? Would you believe the matter of whether federal money should be used for something like the Adler Planetarium's mission has actually come up before? A former colleague of Obama's on the law faculty of the University of Chicago, the late, great, David P. Currie, told briefly in The Constitution in Congress: The Jeffersonians 1801-1829 the story of how early in the nineteenth century Congress considered a proposal for the federal government to build an observatory. Citing a House committee's 1813 report, Currie mused, "The United States, if the committee had its way, were going into the business of astronomy" (p. 310). Currie goes on to ponder whether this could be sanctioned under the Commerce Clause--after all, using an observatory to establish the positions of heavenly bodies could be a help to navigation, which is directly related to commerce--but he also suggests that perhaps the power of Congress "to fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" (Art. I Sec. 8) might come into play. Currie somewhat cops out on the matter, ending his discussion with "Would it have been constitutional? Figure it out for yourself" (p. 312).
Oh those wacky University of Chicago law school professors. They're either asking you for help to figure out if an observatory is constitutional, or asking for your vote so they can, through their legislative or executive efforts, assert that it is.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Gary-mander
I'm reading Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 by Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier. It was published over twenty years ago (1986) and I'd thought about reading it before, but I always opted not to because I'd already read two other popular books about the framing of the Constitution: Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen (1966) and A Brilliant Solution by Carol Berkin (2002).
Well I'm certainly glad I finally picked up the Collier Brothers volume, because it's a whole lot better than either of those other books. Sure, all three works discuss the debating and compromises that led to the adoption of this clause or that clause, but the Collier's book stands out because of the breadth of the biographical information. On page 212, they call William Blount, a North Carolina delegate, "a liar, a cheater, and a thief, and... the subject of the first impeachment trial ever held by the United States government." There follow a couple of fascinating pages on what a tool this guy really was. Bowen and Berkin, on the other hand, hardly mention Blount.
But there is an even better example of the Collier Brothers superiority in this regard. Discussing delegate Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, they report that his last name "is pronounced with a hard G, as in Gary" (p. 318). That sent me scurrying to the indices of the Bowen and Berkin volumes to locate their background details on the man. And guess what? The proper pronounciation of his surname isn't mentioned, which is partly why all these years I thought his name was pronounced "Jerry."
And that led to another revelation. I already knew that Gerry was the source of the term "gerrymander;" this the Collier's mention just a few lines before enlightening me on how to say his name. So why, I wondered, do we say "a jerry-mandered district" instead of "a gary-mandered district"? Off hand, can you think of any examples where mispronounciation of someone's name has stuck in a new word? I can't.
But then I thought I'd better double check and make certain I hadn't been mispronouncing "gerrymander" all these years. And lo and behold, I discovered that BOTH pronounciations of gerrymander are acceptable! You will note at the cited link that the term comes from a combination of Gerry's surname and salamander "from the shape of an election district formed during Gerry's governorship of Massachusetts." Well a lot of politicians have been compared to reptiles; it seems only fair that their misshapen districts be compared to amphibians.
Personally, now that I know it's "Elbridge Gary" and not "Elbridge Jerry" I'll endeavor to never again say "jerry-mander" instead of "gary-mander." Thanks, Collier Brothers!
Well I'm certainly glad I finally picked up the Collier Brothers volume, because it's a whole lot better than either of those other books. Sure, all three works discuss the debating and compromises that led to the adoption of this clause or that clause, but the Collier's book stands out because of the breadth of the biographical information. On page 212, they call William Blount, a North Carolina delegate, "a liar, a cheater, and a thief, and... the subject of the first impeachment trial ever held by the United States government." There follow a couple of fascinating pages on what a tool this guy really was. Bowen and Berkin, on the other hand, hardly mention Blount.
But there is an even better example of the Collier Brothers superiority in this regard. Discussing delegate Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, they report that his last name "is pronounced with a hard G, as in Gary" (p. 318). That sent me scurrying to the indices of the Bowen and Berkin volumes to locate their background details on the man. And guess what? The proper pronounciation of his surname isn't mentioned, which is partly why all these years I thought his name was pronounced "Jerry."
And that led to another revelation. I already knew that Gerry was the source of the term "gerrymander;" this the Collier's mention just a few lines before enlightening me on how to say his name. So why, I wondered, do we say "a jerry-mandered district" instead of "a gary-mandered district"? Off hand, can you think of any examples where mispronounciation of someone's name has stuck in a new word? I can't.
But then I thought I'd better double check and make certain I hadn't been mispronouncing "gerrymander" all these years. And lo and behold, I discovered that BOTH pronounciations of gerrymander are acceptable! You will note at the cited link that the term comes from a combination of Gerry's surname and salamander "from the shape of an election district formed during Gerry's governorship of Massachusetts." Well a lot of politicians have been compared to reptiles; it seems only fair that their misshapen districts be compared to amphibians.
Personally, now that I know it's "Elbridge Gary" and not "Elbridge Jerry" I'll endeavor to never again say "jerry-mander" instead of "gary-mander." Thanks, Collier Brothers!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
I wish McCain would shut up about the bears
At last Friday night's debate, Senator John McCain did it again. He griped about the money the federal government is spending to study bear DNA. Here is a fine article detailing why this is NOT a waste of money.
But more to the point, I am at a total loss to understand why this is the government expenditure McCain scowls at when the feds provide so much money to Planned Parenthood. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachman has recently made an issue of this; declaring "Planned Parenthood pays no taxes and they receive over $300 million per year in grants from the federal government."
I think Bachman makes an error here, lumping all government funding with that provided by the federal government. Planned Parenthood's balance sheet from the 2007 fiscal year states that they received 336.7 million dollars in funding from "government grants and contracts;" but some of that funding has come from the states. (One might think Planned Parenthood's balance sheet would divide public funding into "national" and "state and local.")
Anyway, as a zoologist I disagree with McCain on the bear studies, and since he has expressed pro-life sentiments I don't understand why he doesn't make Planned Parenthood a target instead of Yogi and Boo-Boo. Remember, Senator, people like bears; they're quite cute and endearing as long as you observe them from a distance. On the other hand, people generally don't like abortions. That's why it was so smart for the government to create Smokey Bear. You think people would be as careful to put out their campfires if advised to do so by Smokey the Abortion?
But more to the point, I am at a total loss to understand why this is the government expenditure McCain scowls at when the feds provide so much money to Planned Parenthood. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachman has recently made an issue of this; declaring "Planned Parenthood pays no taxes and they receive over $300 million per year in grants from the federal government."
I think Bachman makes an error here, lumping all government funding with that provided by the federal government. Planned Parenthood's balance sheet from the 2007 fiscal year states that they received 336.7 million dollars in funding from "government grants and contracts;" but some of that funding has come from the states. (One might think Planned Parenthood's balance sheet would divide public funding into "national" and "state and local.")
Anyway, as a zoologist I disagree with McCain on the bear studies, and since he has expressed pro-life sentiments I don't understand why he doesn't make Planned Parenthood a target instead of Yogi and Boo-Boo. Remember, Senator, people like bears; they're quite cute and endearing as long as you observe them from a distance. On the other hand, people generally don't like abortions. That's why it was so smart for the government to create Smokey Bear. You think people would be as careful to put out their campfires if advised to do so by Smokey the Abortion?
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Fifteen duties
Trivia to ask your friends: according to the Constitution, exactly how many duties does the President of the United States have?
By my count, it's fifteen. Twelve of the duties of the Oval Office are specified in Article II, sections 2 and 3. For the life of me, I don't know why the framers split this into two sections. It's not as though one section has mostly his domestic concerns and another his foreign policy charges, or that one has things he can do himself while the other is things he needs to consult with Congress on. Reading sections 2 and 3, it simply appears that the division was based on style.
I'll summarize here the President's dozen duties; all are from Article II sections 2 and 3 unless otherwise indicated. In the order that they are listed:
1. Signing or vetoing legislation (Article I, section 7)
2. Commander in Chief of the armed forces
3. Asking his cabinet for written opinions
4. Pardoning people who commit offenses against the United States
5. Making treaties
6. Nominating ambassadors, judges, etc.
7. Filling vacancies in the Senate with recess appointments
8. Giving State of the Union addresses and recommending legislation to Congress
9. Convening both Houses in an emergency
10. Telling Congress when to adjourn if they can't decide themselves
11. Receiving ambassadors and other foreign dignitaries
12. Taking care that the laws be faithfully executed
13. Commissioning all the Officers of the United States
14. Nominating someone for Vice-President if there is a vacancy (Amendment XXV, section 3)
15. Telling everybody the operation was fine, the anaesthesia has worn off, and he's ready to serve as President again (Amendment XXV, sections 3 and 4).
You could argue the President has more duties than this. Article 1, section 9 provides that the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended unless there is a rebellion. It doesn't specify who does the suspending; Abe Lincoln assumed he could (see Farber, Lincoln's Constitution, 2003, p. 158). I left that out, because I wanted to limit this article to things it is obvious from the Constitutional text that he has the authority to do.
Anyway, I decided that as a little exercise I was going to take those duties and make my own subjective list, ranking them from... well, I don't really want to say least important to most important, because you know me, I don't want to imply that anything in the Constitution is unimportant. What I'm getting at with my list is this: which duties are things that if you are the most partisan person in America you really don't care if it's somebody in the other party handling? How, in other words, are the fifteen responsibilities ranked from the least you'd care if either McCain or Obama gets elected, to the most you'd care one way or another?
So this is my list; I encourage you to make your own if you disagree. From least anybody is concerned about to the most anybody is concerned about, I rank them as follows:
15. Telling Congress when to adjourn if they can't decide themselves. Did you think in the list above that I was joking with this one? It's actually in the Constitution; if the House of Representatives and the Senate cannot agree on a time of adjournment, the President decides. Personally, if I was the President and the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate called me and said they couldn't agree on when to stop giving C-SPAN live programming, I'd give them two choices: rock, paper, scissors, or flip a damn coin.
14. Receiving ambassadors and other foreign dignitaries. I presume that if Larry the Cable Guy was the President, even he would know that one doesn't pick one's nose or fart when shaking hands with the French President. Unless the Frenchy does it first.
I do need to acknowledge, however, there is a potential for great significance in isolated cases, as "receiving" ambassadors is tantamount to recognizing the validity of a country's regime. (See page 568 of the annotated Constitution maintained by the Government Printing Office ;
"The recognition of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1933 was an exclusively presidential act.")
13. Commissioning all the Officers of the United States. Remember on the TV series MASH how Radar would shove papers in front of Colonel Blake, or later Colonel Potter, and they would have no idea what the hell they were signing? This is the Constitutional equivalent of that.
12. Filling vacancies in the Senate with recess appointments. Senators often serve a long time, but most of them at least have the sense to retire before they die. Anyway, these recess appointments expire at the end of the next session.
11. Asking the cabinet for written opinions. This is kind of funny, in that if the Constitution did not expressly say that the President had this power, would anybody seriously doubt he did? Why else would he have a cabinet in the first place, if not to get their professional opinions on things?
I hope it's obvious by this point that I'm discussing the importance of the duty itself, not the difference in who possesses the duty. That a Secretary of the Interior under McCain might well give a completely different opinion on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to one issued by a Secretary of the Interior under Obama is significant, but not really germane to the matter I'm concerned with here. There are tens of thousands of business managers in this country that ask subordinates for opinions; this is not a duty we would think particular to the Presidency.
10 and 9. Nominating a new Vice-President if the old one dies or gets arrested, and taking the reins of the Presidency again if he had to briefly give them up. "What if," Akhil Reed Amar ponders, "instead of dying within minutes of being shot in the head, JFK had in fact survived, drifting in and out of consciousness, with uncertain prospects for a full mental recovery? What if the bullet had badly impaired his cognitive functions but in a way that he himself did not understand and refuse to acknowledge?" (America's Constitution: A Biography, 2005, p. 448).
That's why the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified, to deal with presidential disability. But it also has the two duty provisions mentioned here: that if the President is unable to discharge his powers for a short period of time--like if he's under anaesthesia getting operated on--he can turn over control of the Executive branch to the VP and get it back once the gas wears off. Plus, the amendment has the provision that the President gets to nominate someone to fill a Vice-Presidential vacancy, subject to approval of both houses of Congress. I highlight the word "both" because this is in contrast to the President's other nominating powers, spelled out in Article I, in which he only needs the support of the Senate.
I can't rate either of these two things any higher. As far as nominating a new Vice-President is concerned, that's come up once since the amendment was ratified, when Nixon traded Spiro Agnew for Nelson Rockefeller. It will probably come up about twice a century, so it's not a major deal. As for what I like to call the anesthesia provision, well, maybe that's important, but we'd had a constitution for 180 years before that was added. Besides, how difficult is it for the President to say, "My gall bladder is out and I'm wide awake!"
8. Taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. This would include everything from giving tickets to litterbugs at the Washington Monument to prosecuting people who cross state lines to bomb abortion clinics. You could argue that this should be rated higher, but as long as the President is a good cop who makes sure everybody under him knows they have to enforce laws whether they agree with them or not, I presume not too many folks would get worked up whether the President is a Republican or Democrat. This is enforcing law, not making or changing it. You've heard the line about cabinet members serving at the pleasure of the President; this is a duty in which the President serves the pleasure of the people.
7. Convening Congress in an emergency. Very important, but again remember the criteria for my ranking. If some country declares war on the US in the middle of the summer when Congress has left Washington, any competent Chief Executive, regardless of his party, is going to know to call them back to the District.
6. Giving the State of the Union address, in which he implores Congress to do this and that. No matter who the next President is, there will be a night in January that regular programming is preempted for a long speech, and the network's ratings will go down correspondingly. The Prez will get a lot of polite applause from everybody on both sides of the aisle, and the cameras will catch a couple of old Senators appearing to nod off. Really it's not the delivery of the address itself that anybody is concerned with, it's that customarily at this time the President advises Congress what he thinks they should legislate on. (I thought about dividing this into two duties, but they are separated in Article I by a comma and not a semi-colon, so I left it at one responsibility.)
This is the duty some of you may really think I'm off base on; that it should be in, say, the top three because the President's word carries a lot of weight. Maybe you're right, but remember: the President can't pass legislation; he can only recommend it. And even if 150 Congressmen and 30 Senators agree, that's not enough to get it done.
5. Nominating ambassadors, judges, American Idol finalists, etc. (Okay, I made up that last one.) Years ago I saw a W.C. Fields movie--I don't recall the title--in which he and another character, as I recall, fall off a cliff. The other character remarks that they are plummeting a thousand feet and Fields remarks that 999 feet are harmless; it's just the last foot that's going to hurt.
That's kind of the way this Presidential duty is: 999 nominations for people like the guy who will serve as ambassador to Luxembourg, or the intrepid soul who will sit on the bench of the federal court for the Middle District of Georgia so he can preside over a lawsuit determining who is responsible for defective rebar sent from Montgomery to Macon--and once in a blue moon a nomination for a Supreme Court Justice that ties everybody's BVD's into a knot.
Now that we're in the top five, maybe I don't have to justify why I haven't ranked this higher, but in case I do, remember that the Senate has to concur in the nominations, and that while you may be able to name all nine Supreme Court justices, I'd be really impressed if you could name a single ambassador.
4. Making treaties. Again, the Senate must concur. You can switch this with #5 if you prefer.
3. Issuing pardons. Am I rating this too high? After all, how often is there a pardon of significance? I'm putting this in the top three because there is absolutely NO Congressional oversight, as there is with treaties and appointments. When Gerald Ford reached into his Monopoly set, pulled out a "get out of jail free" card, and handed it to Nixon, there was no Constitutional power for Congress to object. Interestingly, the one limitation is that the President cannot pardon in cases of impeachment. So by leaving office voluntarily, Nixon avoided impeachment and left his successor power to pardon him for offenses that might have gotten him impeached! If we ever scrap the Constitution and get a new one, I'd bet you anything you want there will be changes made to the Executive pardoning power.
2. Commander in Chief. I think everybody would put this in the top two; some of you might rank it first. No discussion should be necessary; suffice it to say that if the President did not have this authority, Code Pink wouldn't know who to be mad at.
1. Signing or vetoing legislation. Actually signing legislation isn't that big a deal; the President is just giving his approval to whatever Congress did. It's that veto pen that makes the office of President of the United States so damn powerful. If he vetoes a bill, it takes two-thirds of Congress to override it.
From time to time you'll hear people talk about features of the Constitution that are rather undemocratic. Usually the conversation centers around how there are the same number of Senators for millions of Californians as there are for several hundred thousand folks in Wyoming; or the matter of Presidents getting elected even though they lose the popular vote, thanks to the electoral college, as happened in 2000; or that there are 99 state legislative houses in this country (Nebraska has just one) and it only takes thirteen of the 99 to block a constitutional amendment. Very well. But arguably the veto power is the least democratic constitutional provision of all--one man (or woman) can subvert majority rule unless a pretty extensive super-majority of Congress stops him. That's why I'm ranking the veto power ahead of the military authority, even though people rarely die from a botched veto operation.
Anyway, that's my ranking. What's yours?
By my count, it's fifteen. Twelve of the duties of the Oval Office are specified in Article II, sections 2 and 3. For the life of me, I don't know why the framers split this into two sections. It's not as though one section has mostly his domestic concerns and another his foreign policy charges, or that one has things he can do himself while the other is things he needs to consult with Congress on. Reading sections 2 and 3, it simply appears that the division was based on style.
I'll summarize here the President's dozen duties; all are from Article II sections 2 and 3 unless otherwise indicated. In the order that they are listed:
1. Signing or vetoing legislation (Article I, section 7)
2. Commander in Chief of the armed forces
3. Asking his cabinet for written opinions
4. Pardoning people who commit offenses against the United States
5. Making treaties
6. Nominating ambassadors, judges, etc.
7. Filling vacancies in the Senate with recess appointments
8. Giving State of the Union addresses and recommending legislation to Congress
9. Convening both Houses in an emergency
10. Telling Congress when to adjourn if they can't decide themselves
11. Receiving ambassadors and other foreign dignitaries
12. Taking care that the laws be faithfully executed
13. Commissioning all the Officers of the United States
14. Nominating someone for Vice-President if there is a vacancy (Amendment XXV, section 3)
15. Telling everybody the operation was fine, the anaesthesia has worn off, and he's ready to serve as President again (Amendment XXV, sections 3 and 4).
You could argue the President has more duties than this. Article 1, section 9 provides that the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended unless there is a rebellion. It doesn't specify who does the suspending; Abe Lincoln assumed he could (see Farber, Lincoln's Constitution, 2003, p. 158). I left that out, because I wanted to limit this article to things it is obvious from the Constitutional text that he has the authority to do.
Anyway, I decided that as a little exercise I was going to take those duties and make my own subjective list, ranking them from... well, I don't really want to say least important to most important, because you know me, I don't want to imply that anything in the Constitution is unimportant. What I'm getting at with my list is this: which duties are things that if you are the most partisan person in America you really don't care if it's somebody in the other party handling? How, in other words, are the fifteen responsibilities ranked from the least you'd care if either McCain or Obama gets elected, to the most you'd care one way or another?
So this is my list; I encourage you to make your own if you disagree. From least anybody is concerned about to the most anybody is concerned about, I rank them as follows:
15. Telling Congress when to adjourn if they can't decide themselves. Did you think in the list above that I was joking with this one? It's actually in the Constitution; if the House of Representatives and the Senate cannot agree on a time of adjournment, the President decides. Personally, if I was the President and the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate called me and said they couldn't agree on when to stop giving C-SPAN live programming, I'd give them two choices: rock, paper, scissors, or flip a damn coin.
14. Receiving ambassadors and other foreign dignitaries. I presume that if Larry the Cable Guy was the President, even he would know that one doesn't pick one's nose or fart when shaking hands with the French President. Unless the Frenchy does it first.
I do need to acknowledge, however, there is a potential for great significance in isolated cases, as "receiving" ambassadors is tantamount to recognizing the validity of a country's regime. (See page 568 of the annotated Constitution maintained by the Government Printing Office ;
"The recognition of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1933 was an exclusively presidential act.")
13. Commissioning all the Officers of the United States. Remember on the TV series MASH how Radar would shove papers in front of Colonel Blake, or later Colonel Potter, and they would have no idea what the hell they were signing? This is the Constitutional equivalent of that.
12. Filling vacancies in the Senate with recess appointments. Senators often serve a long time, but most of them at least have the sense to retire before they die. Anyway, these recess appointments expire at the end of the next session.
11. Asking the cabinet for written opinions. This is kind of funny, in that if the Constitution did not expressly say that the President had this power, would anybody seriously doubt he did? Why else would he have a cabinet in the first place, if not to get their professional opinions on things?
I hope it's obvious by this point that I'm discussing the importance of the duty itself, not the difference in who possesses the duty. That a Secretary of the Interior under McCain might well give a completely different opinion on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to one issued by a Secretary of the Interior under Obama is significant, but not really germane to the matter I'm concerned with here. There are tens of thousands of business managers in this country that ask subordinates for opinions; this is not a duty we would think particular to the Presidency.
10 and 9. Nominating a new Vice-President if the old one dies or gets arrested, and taking the reins of the Presidency again if he had to briefly give them up. "What if," Akhil Reed Amar ponders, "instead of dying within minutes of being shot in the head, JFK had in fact survived, drifting in and out of consciousness, with uncertain prospects for a full mental recovery? What if the bullet had badly impaired his cognitive functions but in a way that he himself did not understand and refuse to acknowledge?" (America's Constitution: A Biography, 2005, p. 448).
That's why the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified, to deal with presidential disability. But it also has the two duty provisions mentioned here: that if the President is unable to discharge his powers for a short period of time--like if he's under anaesthesia getting operated on--he can turn over control of the Executive branch to the VP and get it back once the gas wears off. Plus, the amendment has the provision that the President gets to nominate someone to fill a Vice-Presidential vacancy, subject to approval of both houses of Congress. I highlight the word "both" because this is in contrast to the President's other nominating powers, spelled out in Article I, in which he only needs the support of the Senate.
I can't rate either of these two things any higher. As far as nominating a new Vice-President is concerned, that's come up once since the amendment was ratified, when Nixon traded Spiro Agnew for Nelson Rockefeller. It will probably come up about twice a century, so it's not a major deal. As for what I like to call the anesthesia provision, well, maybe that's important, but we'd had a constitution for 180 years before that was added. Besides, how difficult is it for the President to say, "My gall bladder is out and I'm wide awake!"
8. Taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. This would include everything from giving tickets to litterbugs at the Washington Monument to prosecuting people who cross state lines to bomb abortion clinics. You could argue that this should be rated higher, but as long as the President is a good cop who makes sure everybody under him knows they have to enforce laws whether they agree with them or not, I presume not too many folks would get worked up whether the President is a Republican or Democrat. This is enforcing law, not making or changing it. You've heard the line about cabinet members serving at the pleasure of the President; this is a duty in which the President serves the pleasure of the people.
7. Convening Congress in an emergency. Very important, but again remember the criteria for my ranking. If some country declares war on the US in the middle of the summer when Congress has left Washington, any competent Chief Executive, regardless of his party, is going to know to call them back to the District.
6. Giving the State of the Union address, in which he implores Congress to do this and that. No matter who the next President is, there will be a night in January that regular programming is preempted for a long speech, and the network's ratings will go down correspondingly. The Prez will get a lot of polite applause from everybody on both sides of the aisle, and the cameras will catch a couple of old Senators appearing to nod off. Really it's not the delivery of the address itself that anybody is concerned with, it's that customarily at this time the President advises Congress what he thinks they should legislate on. (I thought about dividing this into two duties, but they are separated in Article I by a comma and not a semi-colon, so I left it at one responsibility.)
This is the duty some of you may really think I'm off base on; that it should be in, say, the top three because the President's word carries a lot of weight. Maybe you're right, but remember: the President can't pass legislation; he can only recommend it. And even if 150 Congressmen and 30 Senators agree, that's not enough to get it done.
5. Nominating ambassadors, judges, American Idol finalists, etc. (Okay, I made up that last one.) Years ago I saw a W.C. Fields movie--I don't recall the title--in which he and another character, as I recall, fall off a cliff. The other character remarks that they are plummeting a thousand feet and Fields remarks that 999 feet are harmless; it's just the last foot that's going to hurt.
That's kind of the way this Presidential duty is: 999 nominations for people like the guy who will serve as ambassador to Luxembourg, or the intrepid soul who will sit on the bench of the federal court for the Middle District of Georgia so he can preside over a lawsuit determining who is responsible for defective rebar sent from Montgomery to Macon--and once in a blue moon a nomination for a Supreme Court Justice that ties everybody's BVD's into a knot.
Now that we're in the top five, maybe I don't have to justify why I haven't ranked this higher, but in case I do, remember that the Senate has to concur in the nominations, and that while you may be able to name all nine Supreme Court justices, I'd be really impressed if you could name a single ambassador.
4. Making treaties. Again, the Senate must concur. You can switch this with #5 if you prefer.
3. Issuing pardons. Am I rating this too high? After all, how often is there a pardon of significance? I'm putting this in the top three because there is absolutely NO Congressional oversight, as there is with treaties and appointments. When Gerald Ford reached into his Monopoly set, pulled out a "get out of jail free" card, and handed it to Nixon, there was no Constitutional power for Congress to object. Interestingly, the one limitation is that the President cannot pardon in cases of impeachment. So by leaving office voluntarily, Nixon avoided impeachment and left his successor power to pardon him for offenses that might have gotten him impeached! If we ever scrap the Constitution and get a new one, I'd bet you anything you want there will be changes made to the Executive pardoning power.
2. Commander in Chief. I think everybody would put this in the top two; some of you might rank it first. No discussion should be necessary; suffice it to say that if the President did not have this authority, Code Pink wouldn't know who to be mad at.
1. Signing or vetoing legislation. Actually signing legislation isn't that big a deal; the President is just giving his approval to whatever Congress did. It's that veto pen that makes the office of President of the United States so damn powerful. If he vetoes a bill, it takes two-thirds of Congress to override it.
From time to time you'll hear people talk about features of the Constitution that are rather undemocratic. Usually the conversation centers around how there are the same number of Senators for millions of Californians as there are for several hundred thousand folks in Wyoming; or the matter of Presidents getting elected even though they lose the popular vote, thanks to the electoral college, as happened in 2000; or that there are 99 state legislative houses in this country (Nebraska has just one) and it only takes thirteen of the 99 to block a constitutional amendment. Very well. But arguably the veto power is the least democratic constitutional provision of all--one man (or woman) can subvert majority rule unless a pretty extensive super-majority of Congress stops him. That's why I'm ranking the veto power ahead of the military authority, even though people rarely die from a botched veto operation.
Anyway, that's my ranking. What's yours?
Friday, September 12, 2008
James Madison and the almighty hand
In response to this post, I received a note complaining that I should have quoted James Madison. The implication was that if I had fairly quoted Madison instead of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, it would have been apparent to me that the Saddleback Forum was a dreadful idea.
This note came with a link directing me to this website, which lists quotations by James Madison that support the argument that Madison was an avowed advocate of total separation of church and state.
Predictably, the list of Madison's statements does not include this one:
"The real wonder (of the success of the Constitutional Convention) is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution."
No separation of the divine from government here; Madison is actually saying that the Almighty helped create the U.S. government.
And where in Madison's works can this quotation be found? A private letter to Thomas Jefferson? A speech made to a small body of politicians?
No. It's from The Federalist No. 37. You're probably aware that these were the essays written by Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay and published in newspapers of New York, urging citizens to support ratification of the Constitution. Accordingly, Madison and the others were writing for a large audience; one would expect that under such circumstances they would be particularly careful in choosing their words. Even so, Madison basically wrote that God is on America's side.
My critics: AH! GOTCHA, YOU IDIOT! DON'T YOU KNOW THAT THE FEDERALIST WAS WRITTEN ANONYMOUSLY? Madison's words can't be taken too seriously since he wrote under a pen name which gave his reputation cover.
Wrong. Let Robert Scigliano, editor of the Modern Library edition of The Federalist, speak on this point:
"Although The Federalist's writers were not identified in the newspaper series or in the published edition, word as to who was involved in the project got around pretty quickly, aided by hints dropped by the writers themselves. Hamilton and Madison each told Washington early on of his own involvement, and Madison told Edmund Randolph, the governor of Virginia, about himself and Hamilton... A French translation of The Federalist, published in Paris in 1792, merely confirmed what most people knew by then when it carried the names of the three authors on its title page."
Madison meant what he wrote in Federalist No. 37.
The Separation of Church and State Homepage also has a list of "flawed quotes" which they define as "quotations we've seen advanced by accomodationists (sic) to suggest that the framers did not believe in separation." Naturally I looked there to see if Madison's words from The Federalist were there; they were not. Nor was the remark by Benjamin Franklin that I quoted in my earlier post; recall that Dr. Franklin said at the Constitutional Convention that "God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?"
The authors of the Separation of Church and State Homepage admit their list of "flawed quotes" is incomplete, but one might think that given the significance of Franklin and Madison, as well as the importance of the forums in which they made their remarks, that the website would address them and tell us why they think these are not evidence that the framers weren't dogmatic on separation of church and state.
More troubling is that according to the website, a quote is "flawed" if it comes from somebody who was "not a framer of the Constitution" or if it comes from somebody who was "an antifederalist (sic)." If you think a home run is significant only if it was hit by a member of the New York Yankees, it's then easy to prove that no home run hit by Ted Williams or Ernie Banks was of any consequence. So for every "flawed quote" by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Samuel Adams, or Daniel Webster, the offending words are preceded by the number 1 to remind us that none of these fellows was at the Constitutional Convention. As though because Jefferson was serving his country in Paris, and John Adams doing likewise in London, their thoughts on religion and state were of no value!
As for the idea that a quote has no bearing on the concept of separation of church and state if it was made by Patrick Henry or some other Anti-Federalist--well, that's utterly laughable. The Separation website says:
"If you want to find out how the Constitution was understood in 1787, quote people that supported the Constitution, and not those who thought the Constitution was evil. Patrick Henry, for example, made a number of statements suggesting that our nation was founded on belief in God, and that it was important to acknowledge God in civic affairs, but Henry lost the battle to put religion in the Constitution. More to the point, Henry was an anti-federalist, and vigorously opposed the Constitution when Virginia discussed ratification. Quoting Henry to prove things about the constitution is like quoting the chairman of the Republican National Committee to prove things about the platform of the Democratic party."
Nonsense. Quoting Henry is NOT like quoting the chairman of the RNC to prove things about the Democrat's platform. Instead, it's literally as if someone said that nothing Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi says about the war in Iraq matters because the war is being conducted by a Republican administration. People respond to their critics, consciously or not. As anybody who has read anything on the period knows, the Federalists, like Madison and Hamilton, originally did not want a Bill of Rights. Hamilton, in fact, wrote The Federalist No. 84 in which he expressly argued that a Bill of Rights was a bad idea. The very reason we even have a Bill of Rights, which includes the First Amendment and the concept of separation of church and state so dear to the folks who run this website, is because the Anti-Federalists snarled loudly that the Constitution as written lacked one. Here are a couple of scholars on Patrick Henry speaking at the Virginia Convention for ratification of the Constitution:
"Henry wondered aloud why the Philadelphia convention had not proposed a bill of rights along with the Constitution and argued that one must be added now. He noted sarcastically that a 'Bill of Rights may be summed up in a few words. What do they (the Federalists) tell us?--That our rights are reserved--Why not say so? Is it because it will consume too much paper?" --Richard Labunski, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights, 2006, p. 105.
"Henry... warned that 'the Necessity of a Bill of Rights' was 'greater in this Government, than ever it was in any Government before' because without it Congress would violate one right after another." --Jack Rakove: Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, 1996, p. 323.
Madison, a Federalist who originally didn't want a Bill of Rights, was swayed by the arguments and wound up being not only the primary advocate of a Bill, but the main author of the one we eventually got (see generally Labunski). If it wasn't for the Anti-Federalist outcry, chances are good that the First ten amendments to the Constitution wouldn't be there.
So to recap: we've got a Bill of Rights, which includes the clause preventing an establishment of religion, largely because of the complaints of men like Patrick Henry, but the Separation of Church and State Homepage pooh-poohs anything said on establishment of religion.... by Patrick Henry! Amazing, isn't it? Perhaps these folks will consider founding another website in which they list flawed quotes about Darwinism made by Darwin.
Anyway, I stand by the earlier post. Several of the people responsible for establishing this great country figured there was an almighty deity directly involved in its well-being.
This note came with a link directing me to this website, which lists quotations by James Madison that support the argument that Madison was an avowed advocate of total separation of church and state.
Predictably, the list of Madison's statements does not include this one:
"The real wonder (of the success of the Constitutional Convention) is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution."
No separation of the divine from government here; Madison is actually saying that the Almighty helped create the U.S. government.
And where in Madison's works can this quotation be found? A private letter to Thomas Jefferson? A speech made to a small body of politicians?
No. It's from The Federalist No. 37. You're probably aware that these were the essays written by Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay and published in newspapers of New York, urging citizens to support ratification of the Constitution. Accordingly, Madison and the others were writing for a large audience; one would expect that under such circumstances they would be particularly careful in choosing their words. Even so, Madison basically wrote that God is on America's side.
My critics: AH! GOTCHA, YOU IDIOT! DON'T YOU KNOW THAT THE FEDERALIST WAS WRITTEN ANONYMOUSLY? Madison's words can't be taken too seriously since he wrote under a pen name which gave his reputation cover.
Wrong. Let Robert Scigliano, editor of the Modern Library edition of The Federalist, speak on this point:
"Although The Federalist's writers were not identified in the newspaper series or in the published edition, word as to who was involved in the project got around pretty quickly, aided by hints dropped by the writers themselves. Hamilton and Madison each told Washington early on of his own involvement, and Madison told Edmund Randolph, the governor of Virginia, about himself and Hamilton... A French translation of The Federalist, published in Paris in 1792, merely confirmed what most people knew by then when it carried the names of the three authors on its title page."
Madison meant what he wrote in Federalist No. 37.
The Separation of Church and State Homepage also has a list of "flawed quotes" which they define as "quotations we've seen advanced by accomodationists (sic) to suggest that the framers did not believe in separation." Naturally I looked there to see if Madison's words from The Federalist were there; they were not. Nor was the remark by Benjamin Franklin that I quoted in my earlier post; recall that Dr. Franklin said at the Constitutional Convention that "God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?"
The authors of the Separation of Church and State Homepage admit their list of "flawed quotes" is incomplete, but one might think that given the significance of Franklin and Madison, as well as the importance of the forums in which they made their remarks, that the website would address them and tell us why they think these are not evidence that the framers weren't dogmatic on separation of church and state.
More troubling is that according to the website, a quote is "flawed" if it comes from somebody who was "not a framer of the Constitution" or if it comes from somebody who was "an antifederalist (sic)." If you think a home run is significant only if it was hit by a member of the New York Yankees, it's then easy to prove that no home run hit by Ted Williams or Ernie Banks was of any consequence. So for every "flawed quote" by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Samuel Adams, or Daniel Webster, the offending words are preceded by the number 1 to remind us that none of these fellows was at the Constitutional Convention. As though because Jefferson was serving his country in Paris, and John Adams doing likewise in London, their thoughts on religion and state were of no value!
As for the idea that a quote has no bearing on the concept of separation of church and state if it was made by Patrick Henry or some other Anti-Federalist--well, that's utterly laughable. The Separation website says:
"If you want to find out how the Constitution was understood in 1787, quote people that supported the Constitution, and not those who thought the Constitution was evil. Patrick Henry, for example, made a number of statements suggesting that our nation was founded on belief in God, and that it was important to acknowledge God in civic affairs, but Henry lost the battle to put religion in the Constitution. More to the point, Henry was an anti-federalist, and vigorously opposed the Constitution when Virginia discussed ratification. Quoting Henry to prove things about the constitution is like quoting the chairman of the Republican National Committee to prove things about the platform of the Democratic party."
Nonsense. Quoting Henry is NOT like quoting the chairman of the RNC to prove things about the Democrat's platform. Instead, it's literally as if someone said that nothing Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi says about the war in Iraq matters because the war is being conducted by a Republican administration. People respond to their critics, consciously or not. As anybody who has read anything on the period knows, the Federalists, like Madison and Hamilton, originally did not want a Bill of Rights. Hamilton, in fact, wrote The Federalist No. 84 in which he expressly argued that a Bill of Rights was a bad idea. The very reason we even have a Bill of Rights, which includes the First Amendment and the concept of separation of church and state so dear to the folks who run this website, is because the Anti-Federalists snarled loudly that the Constitution as written lacked one. Here are a couple of scholars on Patrick Henry speaking at the Virginia Convention for ratification of the Constitution:
"Henry wondered aloud why the Philadelphia convention had not proposed a bill of rights along with the Constitution and argued that one must be added now. He noted sarcastically that a 'Bill of Rights may be summed up in a few words. What do they (the Federalists) tell us?--That our rights are reserved--Why not say so? Is it because it will consume too much paper?" --Richard Labunski, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights, 2006, p. 105.
"Henry... warned that 'the Necessity of a Bill of Rights' was 'greater in this Government, than ever it was in any Government before' because without it Congress would violate one right after another." --Jack Rakove: Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, 1996, p. 323.
Madison, a Federalist who originally didn't want a Bill of Rights, was swayed by the arguments and wound up being not only the primary advocate of a Bill, but the main author of the one we eventually got (see generally Labunski). If it wasn't for the Anti-Federalist outcry, chances are good that the First ten amendments to the Constitution wouldn't be there.
So to recap: we've got a Bill of Rights, which includes the clause preventing an establishment of religion, largely because of the complaints of men like Patrick Henry, but the Separation of Church and State Homepage pooh-poohs anything said on establishment of religion.... by Patrick Henry! Amazing, isn't it? Perhaps these folks will consider founding another website in which they list flawed quotes about Darwinism made by Darwin.
Anyway, I stand by the earlier post. Several of the people responsible for establishing this great country figured there was an almighty deity directly involved in its well-being.
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