Launching the Nine-ther Movement
by Bruce Webb
Conservatives have long been 2nd Amendment Absolutists (unless you are a black man carrying a stick outside a mostly black precinct in Philadelphia, somehow ‘open carry’ doesn’t apply there). Now they have doubled down with the Tenther Movement, which they have tied together with an Enumerated Powers doctrine which mostly doesn’t actually appear in the text of the Constitution, to launch a renaissance of States’ Rights and even Nullification. Yet this expansive reading of the 2nd and 10th amendments somehow never seems to prevent them from claiming that the Right to Privacy underlying Roe v Wade just isn’t in the Constitution at all. Yet if you apply Tenther logic to the Ninth Amendment as read in light of the Fourth the right to privacy seems pretty much implicit.
Amendment 9 – Construction of Constitution. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
So like States People have retained rights that only START with the Fourth Amendment
Amendment 4 – Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Hmm, ‘secure in their persons’. Unless you have a uterus I guess.
This is particularly acute given that Scalia came out and claimed that the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment don’t apply to women as such.
Amendment 14 – Citizenship Rights. Ratified 7/9/1868.
1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Sorry ladies, per Scalia you are not even part of the ‘people’ as expressed in the Ninth and Fourth Amendments, or even in principle ether ‘persons’ or ‘citizens’ under the Fourteenth.
Anyone expecting the Teabaggers to come running to join an effort to read the Ninth as broadly as they do the Second and Tenth? Me neither.
The only thing my uterus does these days is crowd my bladder, but I’ve gotta say–even my uterus is offended.
The 9th amendment is quite important. It shows that the framers of the bill of rights anticipated the risk potentially posed by judges like Scalia. But I can’t help thinking of this article in The Onion http://tinyurl.com/yym87db
“Keep the fat hands of soldiers out of America’s larders!”
Third Amendment is broader and should be litigated when the military is spending and taking the contents of the US’ larders for war profits and empires.
Gates just released, been around the K St crowd for weekds, the list of things to introduce the appearance austerity in the war profits machine.
Included: pay freezes, close a few foreign bases, maybe kill the mutant Amphib which a company in Northern Va have not gotten right in 20 years, maybe cut back the F-35 which is holding back another 2 year slip, and impending implosion, and cut back on health insurance for dependents and retirees.
$100B reduction in growth of the $700B a year war machine over 5 years.
The war machine is digging deeper into the taxpayer/lenders’ larder at a slightly slower pace.
Well with the “war on terra” the 4th amendment has become a pretty shaky basis for any right these days. Maybe the focus should have been just on a 9th amendment right to control ones own body. the whole privacy deal arose out of Griswold v Conneticut on a woman’s right to use contraceptives.
Here I thought that this year might be dull, but no, “here come da judge”, I think he needs his meds changed, because he’s acting weird, probably because there are now “3 Women” on the court, with the possibility of another replacing perhaps the Chief Justice, which shakes the old guy up.
Sadly (maybe) the Constitution means whatever five Justices say it means, and the people will put up with.
The “South” may have bitched and moaned about “state’s rights” with respect to their negro problem, but essentially the people of even the south put up with civil rights… i like to think that most of them knew it was “right.” But the people of America are happy to put up with invasions of privacy in return for the illusion of safety.
as for that black guy with a stick… I was stopped for carrying a walking stick when i was about fourteen. It was a weapon, you know. I hadn’t thought of it as a weapon so I did not claim my second amendment rights. Walking sticks are unknown to the American public who never walk off trail, and so you won’t get a constituency to defend the right to bear sticks.
What are you going to do with a nation that stands there smiling and nodding while the experts tell them Social Security is the cause of the deficit?
I was the first Ninther, although I didn’t have the sense to coin the phrase. You know, the framers knew that stuff changes cause **it happens. So, you gotta have a sorta disclaimer. In fact, the Tenth is a disclaimer that says, if it’s not the federal govt’s right then it belongs to the states or the people. Which is the equivalent of saying, “Think about it! How long do you want this thing to be?” The Ninth is also a CYA which anticipates changes in social views and the country’s direction. Who knew women would turn out to be people and be protected under the Fourteenth? No one at all when the amendments stopped at Ten. Anyhow, I volunteer to defend the Ninth amendment. Sign me up, I’m game. NancyO
Nancy take it, it’s yours!