In this country written constitutions were deemed essential to protect the rights …

In this country written constitutions were deemed essential to protect the rights and liberties of the people against the encroachments of power delegated to their governments, and the provisions of Magna Charta were incorporated into bills of rights, they were limitations upon all the powers of government, legislative as well as executive and judicial.

U.S. Supreme Court in Hurtado v. California 110 U.S. 516 (1884)

As a junior member in the US House, he was a major …

As a junior member in the US House, he was a major force: He wrote and then spearheaded passage of the Superfund law. He even authored the US nuclear negotiating position. And at a time when President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev faced off on the superpower stage, Gore had his own meeting with Gorbachev. And, of course, he created the Internet. At various times in his political career, Gore, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has said all those things about himself and his family. None are quite true. Some are exaggerations grown up around kernels of biographical fact. Others are simply false. A few, like the boastful claim about the Internet, have become comic fodder, even for Gore. Al Gore
Boston Globe, 4/11/00

A federal appeals court Thursday overturned a Mesa, Ariz. man’s federal …

A federal appeals court Thursday overturned a Mesa, Ariz. man’sfederal conviction of possessing five machine guns. A three-judgepanel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of San Franciscoreversed the conviction, ruling that the congressional ban doesnot apply to homemade machine guns and their parts becausethey were never in the stream of commerce. The court ruled thatthere was neither a transfer nor sale of the weapons or their parts,so Congress did not have the power under the Commerce Clauseto regulate homemade guns crafted from scratch.

( 11/13/03 )

Individual Rights and Today's Issue