Watch Rick Perry's Campaign End Before Your Eyes

[N. De Plume]

Nov 10, 2011 18:25:44 GMT -5 ironbite said:

Which might be the only vote he gets. The Tea Party isn't as big as people make it out to be.

Ironbite-it's just loud.

Loud things give me such headaches…

[ltfred]

Nov 10, 2011 9:48:50 GMT -5 cestlefun17 said:

States do not have rights; people have rights. If those rights are best protected by a centralised federal government, rather than 50 state governments, they should be centralised.

In the United States, the states do have certain rights, the most important of which is that they have the right to not be sued without their consent ("sovereign immunity"). Another right they maintain is the right to equal suffrage in the United States Senate (in fact this right is better protected than any constitutional right of the people -- it is the only constitutional right that can never, ever be amended out of the Constitution). They also have the right to pass and enforce laws over certain domains, which as explained by the Constitution is over all powers not granted to the federal government.

'Rights' are a stupid way of looking at these things. These are powers, not rights. Humans have rights; institutions have role (or tasks) and resources with which to achieve them. If a different institution can better achieve that goal, the institution has not even the right to exist.

[clockworkgirl21]

He wants to defund education?

I have no words.

[ironbite]

Not so defund it but throw it back to the states to regulate. While admirable is kinda stupid as each state would slash their education budget first chance.

Ironbite-wouldn't even take them a second to consider it.

[Twilight Zone]

This whole comparing his intelligence to W thing is unwarranted, after all Bush Jr. tried to eat a pretzel and the pretzel won. So, it has been officially established that W's IQ was lower than a pretzel's but higher than a shoe's. No other Republican can match that level of intellect.

edit

PS, I'm being sarcastic. But I can only see the people who vote for these Republican candidates as equally intelligent.

[cestlefun17]

This isn't quite true. The federal government has extremely broad powers under the 'general welfare' and 'necessary and proper' clauses of the constitution, as per McCulloch v Maryland.

I'm not saying the Dpt. of Education is definitively unconstitutional; I'm just saying that I don't believe it is an unreasonable position to think so. There are two competing theories over the General Welfare Clause: the Madison and the Hamilton interpretations, and although the Hamilton interpretation dominates modern-day case law, the Madison interpretation is still a legitimate personal opinion to hold.

'Rights' are a stupid way of looking at these things. These are powers, not rights. Humans have rights; institutions have role (or tasks) and resources with which to achieve them. If a different institution can better achieve that goal, the institution has not even the right to exist.

Perhaps the last thing I listed are powers (as indicated by the 10th Amendment), but in no sense of the word can the right to equal suffrage in the Senate or the right to immunity from lawsuits be considered a "power." They aren't things the state does; they are things guaranteed to them.