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Originally Posted by dksuddeth
if you take plain text at it's meaning, it's not necessary to interpret. that is, unless the purpose is to thwart the plain text you're reading.
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I'm going to put this in plain text so that you can interpret its meaning: "taking plain text at its meaning" is interpreting it.
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and in case you haven't noticed, we're a long way from the constitution as it was written.
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I know, right? It's been well over 200 years now!
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however, those laws and enforcement shouldn't go beyond the prescribed powers in the constitution, yet that's exactly what we have today. Are those constitutional in reality? or are the people powerless to stop it now?
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I don't know. Not without going into specific examples. But, no, laws and their enforcement shouldn't in principle go beyond the powers in the Constitution.
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how are they not well written? there's really only one amendment that has any vagueness to it and that's the fourth.
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I've mentioned this before. If we were to take the Constitution in its current form and present it as though it were new and for consideration to be enacted today, I strongly believe it would be ridiculed for its vagueness and awkward constructions. If this weren't the case, people would never bother to consider the framers' intent or the Federalist Papers. They'd just say, "Hey, it's all right in there in the Constitution. It's clear, cogent, and prescriptive. I don't know what your problem is. I don't even know why we bother with the Supreme Court and Constitutional scholars."