Dark Jedi

Well, I got my reply from my senator.

History: Senator Campbell is a Rep. , but has been a very moderate one so far. His voting has been reasonable and fair so far as I have been able to tell.
I have voted for him twice.
I have dealt with him and his office for many years, as he heads the Vetrans Administration board.

His response was frightening, and showed much ignorance. I intend to scan and make availiable the letter, but I am in the middle of a system transition, and my scanner will not be back online for a couple of days.

Highlights:
He quotes the first amendment as the reason for wanting to vote a new identical law in to law and quotes "establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exersize thereof". Yet he conveiniently left off the "Congress shall make NO LAW" portion.

He then asserts that we need to rule the Constitution unconstitutional because of it's many references to "God" and "Creator".


Plese, Ben, show me a single instance of these words in the U.S. Constitution.

Link to scanned letter to be inserted here at a later date. (Soon, I hope!)
Anyone know how to get a Lexmark Z81 all-in-one working on Linux?

Shadowy Man

I wonder if the senators themselves even write the standard reply letter. Maybe they just say to an aide "uh.. write up something about how I disagree with the court's ruling because it would be unpopular of me to agree...use whatever reasons you can think of..."

hezekiah jones

If anything this whole episode has been very instructive with respect to the degree to which our elected representatives are familiar with the Constitution they've sworn to uphold. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Stephen Maturin

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Godless Sodomite

I've not yet received a response from my reps yet. I'm not looking forward to one if it's as nonsensical as the ones we've been reading on this forum in the past couple of days. The scariest part is that either our Congress reps are incredibly stupid, or they all think we are. I think it's more likely that they think we're the stupid ones. Unfortunately, in most cases they are absolutely correct; most Americans are ignorant of our rights and what they mean. The fact that they've managed to convince nearly an entire nation that rights are dispensed by an inter-dimensional imaginary sky fairy gives them a huge head start in making bogus assertions that go largely unchallenged.

But what doesn't make any sense to me in this scenario is that those of us who bothered enough to actually pay attention to the court ruling and express our support for it are obviously not the standard acquiescent do-nothing citizens. Do they really think so much of themselves that they believe against all reason that any of us would actually be satisfied with the answers we're being given?

Has anyone received a reply from Congress that wasn't full of obfuscation, misdirection, and outright lies?

-Jerry

[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Reverend Godless Sodomite ]</p>

Amazon

This sounds like another letter-writing opportunity. I've written plenty over the last couple weeks on this subject, and the local papers are probably getting tired of hearing from me, but I think that this may be a real doozy.

I think I'll do a search on all the government representative responses posted here, and include the one I got from Dennis Hastert, and expose the provable ingorance of our elected officials. Not just the opinion, but the lies - intentional or unintentional.

Of course, do you think Joe Usualguy will really care if the voted-most-popular boys and girls in the country actually know anything about their own governing documents?

I'm afraid the answer will be "no", followed by a yawn, a ball-scratch, and a flip to the comics section.

Grumpy

FYI, Campbell was a Democrat until 1995, when he <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/05/23/party.switchers/" target="_blank">changed to Republican</a>. The switch must not have been significant to him, since he doesn't mention it on his <a href="http://www.senate.gov/~campbell/bio.htm" target="_blank">biography page</a>. In fact, unlike other senators, Campbell doesn't appear to have any references to party affiliation on his website at all!

I'll note in passing that all the Republican senators who raked Jim Jeffords over the coals for "going against the will of the voters" when he left the GOP last year must have forgotten about Campbell and Richard Shelby, both of whom conveniently switched *after* Republicans took over in 1994.

hezekiah jones

Since that event the consequent symptoms of brain death have advanced unabated, apparently.

Dark Jedi

Update:
I re-read the letter when I was a bit calmer. He said "Declaration of Independance" not "Constitution".

My apologies Mr. Campbell.

However, the letter is still insulting and shows a distinct lack of constitutional knowledge, if not outright avoidance of the issue with the studied absence of the "Congress shall make no law" portion of the First Amendment.

Scanned image located here:
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/a_jediknight/Campbell/nighthorse_small.jpg" target="_blank">Link</a>

Url, in case Geocities does not allow a direct link:
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/a_jediknight/Campbell/nighthorse_small.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/a_jediknight/Campbell/nighthorse_small.jpg</a>

Toto

I can't get to that link. I can get to
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/a_jediknight/" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/a_jediknight/</a>

but I don't find the .jpg listed there. I think you need to put it in a directory for geocities to allow us to see it.