Friday, September 05, 2003

The Serfdom Times has this post in regards to a latter written by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx) in December of 2002. I cannot find a copy of the letter in question, but I have no reason to doubt its authenticity.
It was concerning the proposal to approve presidential authority to send troops into combat as oppossed to declaraing war.

"I reminded the committee of the words of James Madison, who in 1798 said, "The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature."
It was after that when the Chair stated that declaring war is "anarchronistic, it isn't done anymore ..." It was a jaw-dropping admission... but there was more.
The Chair went on to say that the Constitution had been 'overtaken by events, by time' and is 'no longer relevant to modern society.'
The Ranking Minority Member called the declaration of war 'frivolous and mischievous'."



But alas, no record of these statements exist.

"Little did I know that no one watching the hearing over C-SPAN -- not a single person of what statistically is an audience of several million Americans -- even heard those inflammatory comments.
When my staff called C-SPAN to get a copy of the video record to document these outrageous statements, we were told "technical difficulties" prevented that portion of the proceeding from being recorded.
... and that same portion of the proceedings was also the only part missing on the internal record the House makes of such official hearings."


& I don't blame them one bit. Damned if I'd want to be on record as saying the Constitution doesn't matter anymore. Course not saying it or believing it would be the method I would chose.

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