Curmudgeon's Corner

Constitutional Protections...

Posted by Al Campbell on Oct. 29, 2008

Political, Potpourri, Quality of Life, U.S.

If you've watched the Fox News Channel chances are good that you've seen Judge Andrew Napolitano, the dapper and perpetually happy senior judicial analyst for Fox News.  He has written a piece titled "Most Presidents Ignore The Constitution" that appears on the Opinion page of today's Wall Street Journal.

He writes about the 2001 Public Radio interview of Barack Obama where Obama was lamenting that the civil rights movement had become too 'court centered' and therefore failed to cause 'reparations' for past abuses.  That, of course, serves as quite a bombshell so far as future implications if he is elected and presuming he has the same thoughts today that he held then.

I thought, however, that the balance of the opinion piece was quite interesting as Judge Napolitano discussed how the majority of presidents of our country have ignored the Constitution and forged ahead as they desired.  Roosevelt caused agriculture to be subjected to a "Soviet-style central planning" process and rejected arguments that this was unconstitutional.  Roosevelt said that the Constitution was "quaint" and that it was written in the "horse and buggy days" and predicted that the public and the courts would agree with him according to Napolitano's article.

Napolitano cites that Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland were the exceptions he recalled who didn't ignore the Constitution.

As we move into the next presidency, regardless of who wins, I'll have to remind myself that most have ignored our Constitution whenever I feel the current President has crossed the line.  He probably will have crossed the line, and appears to have had a lot of company over the history of our country.

We have survived even with the intentional ignoring of our Constitution...but it doesn't seem right no matter who ignores that document.  Where will it end, if it ever will end?