Bill of Rights and the Constitution

Patriotic Quotes by Benjamin Franklin

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins."

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"

"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature."

It's a SHAME that our LEADERS today seem to HAVE FORGOTTEN about those three little but important words: WE THE PEOPLE!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of a trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

While we are accustomed to thinking of the Bill of Rights as strictly an enumeration of the rights of the people, most of the rights included therein are stated more in the form of governmental "thou shalt nots" than they are as guarantees of individual freedom.

This distinction might seem unimportant, but the implications are, in fact, significant. For example, the First Amendment does not grant to the people the freedoms of speech, religion, the press, assembly and petition. In the minds of the Framers, as most eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence, there exist "certain unalienable Rights," rights which can neither be created nor destroyed by governments. Indeed, the Declaration states, it is "to secure these rights, [that] Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Moreover, when a government acts in ways "destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

The Bill of Rights, then, can be read as a list of things the government will not do. What exactly does the Bill of Rights forbid? First, the "Congress shall pass no law" limiting the freedom of expression or religion. The Second Amendment states that the right to bear arms "shall not be infringed" by the government. The Bill of Rights also prohibits the housing of soldiers in the homes of private citizens without their consent, the search or seizure of private property without a warrant, charging people with crimes without convening a Grand Jury, trying an individual twice for the same crime, taking property without "just compensation," and requiring excessive fines or bail or inflicting "cruel and unusual" punishments.

Not only were the authors of the Bill of Rights motivated by the view that the rights of the people were to be protected--not created--by the government, they were also mindful of the excesses of a government that was not limited by the provisions they included in it. During the Colonial Period and the Revolutionary War, the British government had done many of the things that are now prohibited by the Bill of Rights. As the Framers created a new government, they and the people were anxious to insure that such excesses were not soon repeated.

On September 25, 1789, Congress transmitted to the state legislatures twelve proposed amendments, two of which, having to do with Congressional representation and Congressional pay, were not adopted. The remaining ten amendments became the Bill Of Rights.

The first ten Amendments (Bill Of Rights) were ratified effective December 15, 1791.

There are a total of 27 Amendments.

The Eleventh Amendment was ratified February 7, 1795.

The Twelfth Amendment was ratified June 15, 1804.

The Fourteenth Amendment was superseded by section 3 of the Twentieth Amendment.

The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified December 6, 1865.

The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified July 9, 1868.

The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified February 3, 1870.

The Sixteenth Amendment was ratified February 3, 1913.

The Seventeenth Amendment was ratified April 8, 1913

The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified January 16, 1919. It was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment, December 5, 1933.

The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified August 18, 1920.

The Twentieth Amendment was ratified January 23, 1933.

The Twenty-First Amendment was ratified December 5, 1933.

The Twenty-Second Amendment was ratified February 27, 1951.

The Twenty-Third Amendment was ratified March 29, 1961.

The Twenty-Fourth Amendment was ratified January 23, 1964.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment was ratified February 10, 1967.

The Twenty-Sixth Amendment was ratified July 1, 1971.

Congress submitted the text of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the States as part of the proposed Bill of Rights on September 25, 1789. The Amendment was not ratified together with the first ten Amendments, which became effective on December 15, 1791. The Twenty-Seventh Amendment was ratified on May 7, 1992, by the vote of Michigan.

Obama deals with U S debt Thursday, 04 August 2011 07:52 Edward J. O'Boyle, Ph.D.

USA 4 August 2011. Two lessons from the blistering discourse just concluded on the debt ceiling. Language matters. Social Security and Medicare are untouchable.

The Social Security retirement trust fund, according to the 2011 report of the program's trustees, will be exhausted in 2038. At that time current benefits will be paid from current tax contributions. However, the trust fund already is encountering serious financial problems. Benefits paid in 2010 amounted to $577 billion while net payroll tax contributions totaled $545 billion. The cash deficit was covered mainly by interest payments from the fund's holdings of Treasury securities purchased in the past with the fund's excess cash. With no changes in this program, anyone born after 1972 will not receive the full retirement benefits currently promised.

The Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2024. The current plan is to deal with this financial crisis by further cutting reimbursement to hospitals. Inevitably access to care will be restricted or possibly denied entirely or the quality of care will diminish. These outcomes will immediately impact anyone Medicare-eligible who was born before 1959 including many baby boomers.

The falling birth rate in the United States means not only fewer workers to support the retiring baby boomers but also fewer adult children to assist their baby boomer parents in times of need. The boomers increasingly will be dependent on the public safety net for assistance. Baby boomers with children have a legitimate worry that their children and grandchildren will be saddled with the burgeoning cost of the public debt, Medicare, and Social Security retirement. Childless baby boomers have no skin in the Social Security retirement game unless they live beyond 2038. Add to them the millions who pay no income taxes and there is little support for addressing the public debt and Social Security retirement. With or without children, boomers do have skin in the Medicare game.

These entitlement programs are untouchable for another reason. The discourse in Congress fosters disagreement. Watching Congressional speeches on C-SPAN, especially the debate in the House of Representatives, reveals a terrible lack of civility that divides rather than unifies. Consider the language used most recently in Congress: "they are acting like terrorists," "he has moved to the dark side," "the deal is a Satan sandwich," "fat cats," "they're taking us back to the 19th century," "they've been holding Congress hostage." Not to mention the harsh and destructive language in the media, especially cable TV, where "strategists" from the Republican and Democratic camps routinely batter one another.

So what's happened to the civility that President Obama called for immediately following the deadly shootings earlier this year in Tucson, Arizona? Language matters: it can heal and it can hurt. Congress will not soon set aside the hurt inflicted this summer.

Presidential leadership on volatile issues such as the debt ceiling, the public debt, and entitlements where the various interested parties are deeply divided is not a matter of setting down a detailed plan that those parties buy into. Rather, leadership involves bringing the parties together and helping them find common ground amid their differences in order to reach agreement. The president must set aside his role as head of his political party and focus on agreement and not his personal "big deal" agenda. The president must become a mediator or step aside and appoint someone else. Someone who is widely known and respected for an ability to forge agreement in especially difficult circumstances. Someone who sides with none of the parties at the table.

The president should have been striving to get an agreed bill that he would have signed whatever its provisions even if it did not reflect his own preferences. He should have taken this position well before the discourse degenerated into rival talking points expressed in uncivil language, scapegoating, posturing, scare tactics, and demonizing. In a time of crisis, the American people deserve better than in-your-face language.

Don't expect the Super Committee to reach agreement. The deep divisions in Congress persist and there is no one clearly able and willing to mediate differences. Instead, expect the same outcome as with last year's Bowles-Simpson report that Obama disowned before the ink was dry. Cuts projected into the future are meaningless whenever they require future Congresses to approve those cuts. The only cuts that truly matter are the ones that are linked to permanent changes in the entitlement programs. And because they have been untouchable in 2011 those programs very likely will remain untouchable in the elections next year.

Pity the president who in little more than 12 years, possibly sooner, has to deal with the American people who have become outraged that Medicare is broken and the president who in roughly 27 years has to admit that the promised retirement benefits cannot be delivered.

Just as the cost of repairing a leaky roof increases the longer one puts off those repairs, the longer that Medicare and Social Security reforms are put off the more costly the reforms become with every passing year.

In the end, will reform require the kind of rebellion Thomas Jefferson spoke of nearly 225 years ago?

Edward J. O'Boyle is Senior Research Associate with Mayo Research Institute.

Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering.
Finally fed up, God said, 'THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job.'
So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.
They moused.
They faxed.
They e-mailed.
They e-mailed with attachments.
They downloaded.
They did spreadsheets!
They wrote reports.
They created labels and cards.
They created charts and graphs.
They did some genealogy reports
They did every job known to man.
Jesus worked with Heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell.
Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off..
Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.
Jesus just sighed.
Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming: 'It's gone! It's all GONE! 'I lost everything when the power went out!'
Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work..
Satan observed this and became irate.
'Wait!' he screamed. 'That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?'
God just shrugged his shoulders and said, "JESUS SAVES"

Amendment 14 Civil rights NOTE; AUGUST 3, 2011 Will soon be here and those of us on pensions are in jeopardy of not getting them. THIS IS IN VIOLATION OF THIS AMENDMENT. SOMEONE TOOK THE MONEY SET ASIDE FOR THIS. IT MUST NOT GO UNPUNISHED.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

July 9, 1868.