The interstate commerce clause is just craziness. It touches everything and gives justification to regulate nearly anything.

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cogman10 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A lot of stuff does have interstate implications. Especially now that most corporations operate in an interstate fashion.

That said, I agree that it's overused. I personally think that the 9th amendment should be used in a lot of cases, like civil rights, instead of the interstate commerce law.

The supreme court, however, has basically decided that the 9th amendment doesn't really exist.

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mothballed 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You could just as easily stuff most of those things under the "general welfare" clause if you do the same rigamarole of years and years of precedent hand-waving. We live in a post constitutional state. The constitution is just something worked to backwards so the guys who function as our priests/gods point to the document because that's the only way to feign some sort of legitimacy to our government.

Ultimately none of us signed the constitution and all of those people that did are dead. It is a religious artifact used by the whig -god people to argue they are right. Not something followed with faith to the historical context nor literal contract.

(edit: to below trying to compare bad-faith ICC to good-faith general welfare, you must apply similar levels of creativity and bad faith. Ban things through high or impossible to pay taxation. "Tax" behavior to force people to do something in a certain way, make very heavy penalties for not paying the tax, and also make it extremely difficult to buy the tax stamps (this is how they did drug control until they decided to use the new fraud of "interstate" commerce).

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Windchaser 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

General Welfare Clause only applies to taxing and spending, though, not just general regulation (e.g., making drugs illegal or banning segregation).

	▲	gbacon 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars … But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation! Federalist No. 41 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed41.asp

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4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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seanw444 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree, from the other side of the aisle. The Constitution is merely a well-guarded piece of toilet paper now. Culture matters way more than legal documents in preserving a nation, and our culture has waned too significantly. I believe we've entered the "Byzantine" phase of America.