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Originally Posted by Qtiphky
When they wrote the Constitution they couldn't have envisioned very many of the things that have happened within our Federal Government and the restrictions that they have placed on our every day lives. Won't go into them as they have mostly been covered.
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I sort of disagree with what I think your premise is here. Certainly the Founders could not have envisioned the
specifics of much of what we encounter today. Things like telephones (wiretaps), computers (search warrant to download your hard drive), cell phones (does a cop need a warrant to look at your cal registry?) and a lot of other technology were clearly not on the radar. But ... there is really nothing in the Bill or Rights that's technology-dependent. The fundamental concept of the Constitution was to place limits on the power of the Federal government. The Federal government was not supposed to do anything not
specifically enumerated in the Constitution. And the Bill of Rights was not intended to be an exhaustive list of the rights of the People. It was a list of the most important rights, but by enumerating those rights the Founders certainly did NOT intend to cancel all other fundamental human/civil rights.
And for that reason I think the Constitution as amended by the Bill of Rights does what it intended to do very well. The problem isn't the Constitution; the problem is judges who can't read, and judges who deliver creative/expansionist rulings in order to further their personal agendas.
Case in point: Marijuana. The Constitution assigns to the Federal government the task/role of regulating interstate commerce. Fine -- that's all well and good. But it took a VERY tortured application of the interstate commerce clause for the Supreme Court to rule that marijuana grown in a state, sold in the same state, and consumed in that same state was nonetheless in INTERSTATE commerce because
by NOT importing marijuana from out of state, the growers and vendors in that state AFFECTED interstate commerce by NOT engaging in it.
Huh?
And that's the problem. The Founders never envisioned a government and a judiciary that is so corrupt and so morally and intellectually bankrupt that such a ruling could ever be handed down.