dksuddeth, you need to check your history...it didn't take our nation 80 years to figure out that the BoR didn't extend to the states, Congress rejected the notion outright before they ratified the Constitution:
Quote:
This point is best illustrated by one of the amendments that Madison proposed in his initial speech:
Fifthly, That in article 1st, section 10, between clauses 1 and 2, be inserted this clause, to wit:
No State shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases.
This clause, seemingly innocuous to us today, was rejected by the Senate in its final draft of the Bill, and the concept that any part of the Bill of Rights would apply to the states was still 100 years away.
|
And the U.S. Supreme Court smacked "WHITE citizens" down routinely:
Quote:
Several cases that came before the Supreme Court in the 19th century attempted to have the Court establish that the Bill should apply to the states, to no avail:
In Barron v. Baltimore (32 U.S. 243 [1833]), the Court ruled that the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment did not apply to the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland by extension. Succinctly, the Court wrote: "...the fifth amendment must be understood as restraining the power of the general government, not as applicable to the states."
In Pervear v. Massachusetts (72 U.S. 475 [1866]), the Court was asked to rule on fines imposed upon a liquor dealer by the state. Pervear was licensed by the United States under the current internal revenue code to keep and sell liquor. He was fined and sentenced to three months of hard labor for not maintaining a state license for his liquor business. Part to the defense attempted to invoke the 8th Amendment's Excessive Fines and Cruel and Unusual Punishment clauses. The Court, again quite succinctly, said: "Of this proposition it is enough to say that the article of the Constitution relied upon in support of it does not apply to State but to National legislation."
|
-- http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_bor.html
__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
Last edited by smooth; 03-14-2007 at 06:08 AM..
|