From: peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu (Mike Peercy)
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberties
Subject: Re: Right to Privacy: Real or Not?
Date: 12 Apr 92 04:27:46 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: dopey.crhc.uiuc.edu

backpack@access.digex.com (Stuart Reges) writes:

| I assume you mean the Bill of Rights, not the Constitution proper, because it
| was the framers' intent to have no limits on federal power in the document
| itself (they preferred to trust in the good judgement of the people who would
| "throw the bums out" if the legislature ever passed egregious laws).

This is not correct.  The framers had _every_ intent to limit the federal
powers to those of Section 8.

My favorite item to post:

    Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation,
    have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on
    the language in which it is defined.  It has been urged and echoed,
    that the power ``to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and
    excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and
    general welfare of the United States,'' [Article I, Section 8, of
    the Constitution of the United States] amounts to an unlimited
    commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be
    necessary for the common defense or general welfare....  Had no
    other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been
    found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited,
    the authors of the objection might have had some color for it....
    But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the
    objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and
    is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?...  For
    what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted,
    if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding
    general power?

                                James Madison
                                Federalist Paper No. 41

Note that the debate Madison is having is _not_ about whether the federal
government's powers are limited by Section 8:  _all_ parties agree that the
government must be limited.  At issue is only whether this is clear in
the draft of the Constitution.  In hindsight, it clearly isn't, and
Madison should have heeded those objections.

| They were
| highly frustrated by the failures evident in the national government under the
| Articles of Conderation and didn't want to limit the new government in a way
| that would require yet another constitutional convention.  As Hamilton says in
| Federalist 23, "it is impossible to foresee or define the extent and variety
| of
| national exigencies, or the correspondent extent and variety of the means
| which
| may be necessary to satisfy them.  The circumstances that endanger the safety
| of nations are infinite and for this reason no constitutional shackles can
| wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed."

You fail to include the context of this exerpt:

    The authorities essential to the common defense are these: to
     raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for
     the government of both; to direct their operations; to provide for
     their support. These powers ought to exist without limitation,
     BECAUSE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FORESEE OR DEFINE THE EXTENT AND VARIETY
     OF NATIONAL EXIGENCIES, OR THE CORRESPONDENT EXTENT AND VARIETY OF
     THE MEANS WHICH MAY BE NECESSARY TO SATISFY THEM. The circumstances
     that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this
     reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power
     to which the care of it is committed. This power ought to be
     coextensive with all the possible combinations of such
     circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same
     councils which are appointed to preside over the common defense.

This is clearly about national defense, and only national defense.

Mike Peercy
peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberties