@CK MacLeod – (insert lame Tsar joke)

They can also declare the sun rises in the West, that white is black, and that cats are dogs. Their doing so does not make it so.

Thus also thoroughly obnoxious resolutions that require Representatives to affirm facts that they can’t really know – like the one that recently just happened to affirm that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. It was just a “whereas” slipped into a 50th Anniversary of Statehood commemoration, but the point was clearly to have the chamber – in this case by unanimous vote – swear a loyalty oath, an agreement to believe regardless of proof or lack of it. Just to be clear, I have very little interest in “Birtherism,” but I’m opposed to the abuse of language and legislation, and to having our legislators creating truths by fiat. It is by similar processes that rulers are deified, or that other points of politicized faith may be forced upon us.

@Sully – The point is that there are rights not explicitly recognised by the Constitution.

Congress, and the executive, and the courts can declare anything a ‘right’. They can also declare the sun rises in the West, that white is black, and that cats are dogs. Their doing so does not make it so.

That the Federal government has exceeded the bounds of the Constitution is evident to anyone able to comprehend the written word. That so few are able these days we can attribute in part to the (unconstitutional) interference of the Federal government in education.

@Seth Halpern – I agree. The word “jerk” was ambiguous, because it used to mean “dope” and in recent years has come to mean “bad person.” I was using it in the latter sense.

Funny, the Van Cliburn thing simply skipped my mind

FWIW, I don’t think Rep. Clyburn was merely being a jerk. No self-respecting Jew of a certain age would make trivial comparisons to Nazism or pogroms and no comparably situated black man would analogize these town hall meetings to Selma and the like. But a cynical would be racial demagogue very well might decide that scoring cheap political points was more important than preserving accurate historical memory.

Joe – “The notion that the government can “act against the Constitution” is a charming one but is also quite dated.”

The increasing acceptance of that point of view is poison to a system that depends on consent of the governed. The current joiners of the militias and other nut groups are fringe folks. No one knows, or can know, the point at which tea starts being dumped into harbors by ordinary folks.

Aelfheld,
The ninth talks of other rights “retained by the people.”

It may just be possible for an intellectually corrupt Supreme Court justice to find justification for government action against some citizens in favor of other citizens in that amendment; but the clear meaning is rights not to be trampled on by government.

And even then, congress cannot simply of itself “establish” a right to all the cotton candy you can eat in the Ninth Amendment.

@Sully –

1. rights are found in the constitution.

If that were the case, there would be no need for the 9th Amendment to the Constitution.

4. So he’s outright saying that congress is acting against the constitution.

So what else’s new? The ability to discover hitherto unsuspected rights in the Constitution has been strictly routine since the 1960s. Clyburn has little to worry about. ALCU lawyers go over the document like water dowsers traipsing across a field with divining rods. They then induce five other and similar wizards on the Supreme Court to shout ‘Eurekamon! Easy as you please, there’s a new right-in-a-box-with-a bow-on-it, with everyone in the press applauding or slapping their foreheads wondering how was it no one saw this perfectly obvious thing before.

The notion that the government can “act against the Constitution” is a charming one but is also quite dated.

Sully, spot-on commentary.

I still maintain he plays a mean piano.