Are Constitutional Violations a Crime?

[Keith Broaders]

If a Senator or Representative votes in favor of legislation that violates provisions of the Constitution and/or the Bill of Rights, has that individual committed a crime and should they be punished or removed from office?

Please post your comments in the section below.

What is Your Opinion?

 

 

[Pat Fields]

Perhaps, I ought to have also bold-highlighted the phrase "the other to be maintained by Congress outside and independently of that instrument", which actually does implicate a separate Charter under which Congress chooses to shift as convenient.

The thrust I propound, on careful study of events as they'd incrementally unfolded over the years, leads me to hold my understandings more firmly than mere accusation of 'criminal intent'. Although, I do agree that criminality has blatantly transpired in the course.

Using the Maxim that 'Law does no Man harm' as my mental curb, I've spent some twenty-five years researching and contemplating these matters in as unprejudiced a fashion as I'm able and the conclusions I've reached answer all the 'anomalies' that had initially so perplexed and disturbed me.

I'm extremely pleased the 'glitch' keeping us from direct discourse has been resolved. These matters deserve ardent, unhindered debate.

[Jon Roland]

That does not "implicate a separate Charter". What it describes has no "charter", no rules, other than to favor the interests of the most powerful, from one moment to the next.

People need to stop looking for the usurpers to be operating according to their own rules, hoping those rules can somehow be discovered and used against them. Tyrants have no rules. They make it up as they go along. That is what makes them tyrants. Get used to it.

[Pat Fields]

That's just not true, Jon. The Dictatorship in the DC city-state and its operational state district jurisdictions, is provided at Art. IV, Sec. 3, cl. 2. What alters the original 1787 Constitution for the USA (besides omission of the true 13th Amendment), is that since 1871, it is the Constitution of the DC municipality.

The 'usurpers own rules' are their internal Civil Law Codes and Statutes. That sphagetti-bowl is truly a bewildering crap shoot to attempt negotiating. I (and others) advocate extrication out from those jurisdictions where they're applicable, to re-empower ourselves to proceed At Common Law in response to the myriad specious claims made possible of allegation under Civil Law.

[Jon Roland]

Actually, the main authority for governance of DC is Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17. Art. IV Sec. 3 Cl. 2 is mainly for the other territories, like Puerto Rico, or the territories that have since been admitted as states.

However, it is nonsense to argue that because a superior government organizes a subsidiary government, such as a city, within its jurisdiction, that the charter for that somehow amends or displaces the constitution of the superior government. That is like saying that granting a charter for the City of Austin somehow amended or replaced the Constitution of Texas. In what bizarro universe does that argument make sense?

Yes, some unconstitutional statutes, regulations, and such can look like rules, but if you examine what is happening closely, you will find the actual actions of officials do not follow even those, and of course even if enacted by Congress, they can be changed from one day to the next, with no attempt to keep them consistent either with the Constitution or with one another. What look like rules are just deceptions to fool people into trying to play by them, when what they should be doing is refusing to play by them.

[Pat Fields]

That makes your attempt to chastise me on the 'context' of the Downes decision, amusing, Jon.

Constitutions are instruments of circumscriptive ... limitation ... on government's powers. An 'interpretation' of the'necessary and proper' clause as ... expansive ... according to government's prerogative, is plainly anti-Constitutional. What is 'necessary', is indispensable, not merely desirus for the sake of usurping powers outside the spirit of the instrument's totality.

“The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.” – Art. IV, Sec. 3, cl. 2

"Property. That which is peculiar or proper to any person; that which belongs exclusively to one. In the strict legal sense, an aggregate of rights which are guaranteed and protected by the government." --Black's Ab. 6th Ed, pg. 845

Now, I don't know about you, Jon, but that's a synonymous term with 'Jurisdiction' in my comprehension.

[Terry Trussell]

Jon, I fear we have gotten too used to it--that's the problem. We need to stick to Constitutional principles only so long as we can win that way. But if they insist on playing dirty, the gloves come off and we fight to the last man--and there's a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them.

[Jon Roland]

In quoting a case opinion like that in Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 (1901), it is important not to quote out of context. The opinion was actually disagreeing that there are two national governments:

The idea prevails with some -- indeed, it found expression in arguments at the bar -- that we have in this country substantially or practically two national governments -- one to be maintained under the Constitution, with all its restrictions, the other to be maintained by Congress outside and independently of that instrument, by exercising such powers as other nations of the earth are accustomed to exercise. It is one thing to give such a latitudinarian construction to the Constitution as will bring the exercise of power by Congress, upon a particular occasion or upon a particular subject, within its provisions. It is quite a different thing to say that Congress may, if it so elects, proceed outside of the Constitution. The glory of our American system of government is that it was created by a written constitution which protects the people against the exercise of arbitrary, unlimited power, and the limits of which instrument may not be passed by the government it created, or by any branch of it, or even by the people who ordained it, except by amendment or change of its provisions.

Don't quote out of context to try to prove a point.

[Pat Fields]

What the Downes Court left unstated, is that the full letter and spirit of the Constitution is only cognizable in the original, ordinary jurisdictions of the Independent States exercising the Sovereignty of their Peoples. Such exclusive enclaves of Congressional jurisdiction as it's wily enough to cajole State legislatures to acquiesce on, are technically beyond those constraints.

Believe me ... NONE of this crap is anything I endorse or allow as 'Just'. It's simply the legal structure I've discerned which explains the myriad seeming dichotomies some of us have found irksome our whole lives.

[H. Gregory Badger]

When push comes to shove DC will not care a whit if we can prove them wrong. They will bulldoze their way around us.

[Pat Fields]

Gregory, I'm afraid that government doesn't have to lift a finger while presumptions of defeat control people's actions. When one faces an adversary, one fully expects vigorous opposition.

[Terry Trussell]

Pat, I agree. I am amazed when I say something critical of the bureaucracy and people respond with, "You'd better not say that too loud," and they're not kidding! So many have already conceded defeat, and that just encourages the criminal bureaucrats. I don't know how we're going to help our fellow Americans find their backbones. That is one of our bigger challenges.

[H. Gregory Badger]

True dat!!!

We need to bulldoze them now whether they like it or not.

What do I mean? Whatever it takes. Try every peaceful means, first.

Defeat? Not a chance.