Friday, February 8, 2008

Enumerated Rights Redux

When you put the words “enumerated rights” into Google, the following are the first three entries:

Incorporation (Bill of Rights) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[9] Black felt that the Fourteenth Amendment required the States to respect all of the enumerated rights set forth in the first eight amendments, ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_(Bill_of_Rights) - 74k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Restoring the Lost Constitution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's tempting to do something similar and simply check the law against the list of enumerated rights. But the Ninth Amendment says (in its entirety) "The ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoring_the_Lost_Constitution - 41k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
More results from en.wikipedia.org »

Eccentricity: Enumerated Rights - 2 visits - Feb 1
The Bill of Rights belongs to that group of Constitutional items known as "enumerated rights" -- those written out explicitly so that no one could claim ...
scorpio-eccentricity.blogspot.com/2007/01/enumerated-rights.html - 61k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Frightening, isn't it? When you search for this basic tenet of the Constitution, you get two Wikipedia articles and then a blog post I made a year ago because I was furious about the way our government was (and is) behaving. We had an Attorney General who did not know that there was a right to habeas corpus written right there in the Constitution – much to the shame of those who appointed Gonzales, and who confirmed such an ignoramus to that office.

US courts have pretended for years that Jose Padilla has no rights. This article explains what was wrong and illegal about the treatment Padilla was subjected to.

If we are counting high crimes and misdemeanors, the abrogation of habeas corpus is high on the list, but the complete disregard for enumerated rights, from "free speech zones" in violation of the First Amendment through all the others except number three make a body of crimes that break the oath of office taken by members of the administration. A mere court oath breach was enough to set the dogs on William Clinton. Where are those who hold oaths so dear now?

But let us return to Google results for today. Why is a very small blog's brief discussion of enumerated rights third in a Google search on this important topic? Where are the mainstream news articles or columns about the Constitution and its application to the way the US government functions? Where is the American Bar Association? Where are the law school papers and articles?

And last, worst – where are the court cases that cite the enumerated rights as reason to overturn actions of the US government during the last seven years?

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