Will ACTA Be Found Unconstitutional? 260
DustyShadow writes "Harvard's Jack Goldsmith and Lawrence Lessig have an interesting op-ed in Friday's Washington Post, arguing that it would be constitutionally dubious for President Obama to adopt the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as an executive agreement. '[T]he Obama administration has suggested it will adopt the pact as a "sole executive agreement" that requires only the president's approval. ... Joining ACTA by sole executive agreement would far exceed these precedents. The president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no long historical practice of making sole executive agreements in this area. To the contrary, the Constitution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property.'"
Uh, isn't that covered in the constitution already (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, let's read Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution:
So, how is a trade agreement not a treaty?
Re:The people's will (Score:5, Informative)
No, that is not how American government works. The president is elected to oversee the implementation of bills passed by Congress, that is all -- presidents do not create laws, nor do they unilaterally decide that the US should sign a treaty. What Obama is doing is sidestepping America's democracy, so that Biden's friends in Hollywood can get what they want.
So, who did you vote for again? (Score:3, Informative)
If one were to take a time machine back to October 2008 and show them an article dated 2010 labeled "President claims power to implement agreement by executive fiat" or some such thing, you'd think that obviously McCain won, right?
Just more evidence that Obama = Bush.
Re:Only hope has passed... (Score:5, Informative)
I wrote my senators and congressman. It took 5 minutes of my time using copy/paste after I wrote the first one.
Finding their contact pages was easily googled , just put in the term" [your state here without brackets] senators" and another "[your state here without brackets] congressional district map" should get you there. Bookmark for future reference. Without any input from people, these clowns will pretty much do whatevers convenient for them at the time. Speak up and be heard, they are your voice and this is your interface for representation.
If you do nothing or maintain and spread the false attitude that your opinion won't be heard, you have no right to complain about your government.
Your message may not be personally read, but the information is used like poll info to let them know what their constituents are thinking.
Get on with it, pull up a tab and DO IT NOW!
Re:Change is Coming? (Score:1, Informative)
Neo-conservatives were more than willing to cheer as their rights ...
There is a significant difference.
Re:The Living Constitution (Score:5, Informative)
To start, I checked into your Teddy J quotes and discovered the following:
#1 is a lie. Jefferson never said that and I challenge you to show me the original publication where he did.
#2 is found in his First Inaugural Address. It was probably a slap at John Adams' Alien and Sedition Act, a law that looked a lot more like the Patriot Act than the health care bill.
#3 is from another private letter. It's regularly trotted out during any controversial social legislation. Read Hirschfield (The Power of the presidency: concepts and controversy, 1982, p.311) on how this is a red herring.
#4 is from a political tract from 1779. You will note that it could just as easily be applied to the Patriot Act, the military-industrial complex, or just about any other Republican-built object of left-wing derision as it can be to social legislation.
#5 is a paraphrase of a section in a letter from 1802. The true quote reads "If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy." Here is the following quote: "Their finances are now under such a course of application as nothing could derange but war or federalism. The gripe of the latter has shown itself as deadly as the jaws of the former." In other words, he would have winced had he seen the bill for Iraq War II, or read the justifications of the neocons.
#6 was in a letter shortly before his death about how the federal government was "consolidating power" by, get this, using the power granted to it by the Constitution (namely the commerce clause). The states are not individual republics. We tried that under the Articles of Confederation and it went over like a a lead balloon. Like it or lump it, they are subordinate in power in the regards enumerated in the Constitution to the power of the federal government. If the Fed chooses to wield that power in a heavy-handed way, it's probably stupid and possibly unethical but not unconstitutional.
The present deficit is a function of the fact that the Republicans by and large write the tax laws whereas the Democrats by and large write the social legislation. The Republicans refuse to raise taxes to pay for the social legislation, and the Democrats refuse to cut spending in the social legislation to match the current tax income. It's being caused by the present political climate of obstructionism, not by your insane theories about the gradual communization of the US. If FDR had wanted to make the US into a socialist state he would have done nothing, waited for the economic climate to bottom out, then blame all the Wall Street fat cats, order their imprisonment, seize their assets, and nationalize them. Poof. Now we're a socialist state, and it didn't take all that sneaking around!
Do you know why Roosevelt created the social safety net? It was partly to stabilize society so we didn't have happen here what happened in Germany and the Soviet Union, where agitators appealed to the people's suffering to gain their complicity in revolutionary policy. It was partly to expand the number of consumers to encourage a restart in the production economy. But mostly it was because it was the right thing to do, because a lot of average Americans were starving to death, working like slaves, and your beloved "free market" wasn't doing a goddamned thing to help them. FDR's problem was actually that he didn't spend enough -- it took the massive deficit spending associated with the war to finally terminate the crisis.
The present health care situation is a national crisis on the order of the food and work crisis provoked by the Great Depression. Thousands of people die every year because they can't afford basic medicines like penicillin and Nitrostat, or they can't afford to see a doctor to prescribe these medicines. Health care decisions are being made by bureaucrats whose only concern is protecting the value of the shareholders, and this excuse rubber-stamps their denial of benefits to thousands more Americans who then go bank
Re:The people's will (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The people's will (Score:3, Informative)
I guess you forgot there was broad bipartisan support for both wars, and almost every country's intelligence agency thought Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.
I can't comment on the first part of this, because I wasn't really paying attention, but the second part is completely untrue. Two intelligence agencies thought Iraq had an active nuclear program. The UK disclosed all of their evidence before the invasion and it was far from conclusive - the strongest evidence in the document was that Iraq was importing magnets (which, clearly, have no non-nuclear uses...).
From talking to people involved with the decision a bit later, the British and US intelligence agencies disclosed everything that they knew to the other, but both assumed that the other side was holding something important back. Neither group had any evidence of a nuclear program, but both thought the other had and wasn't sharing it.
For everyone not part of the intelligence SNAFU, it was obvious that the invasion was ill-advised. That's why a million people marched on London to oppose it.
Apparently many have forgotten that UN inspectors actaully observed both chemical and biological agents in Iraq.
Yes, and the observed these programs being destroyed long before your invasion.
That is if 0 doesn't ban elections in the name of some convenient crisis or another. I'd put very little past him given his narcissism, arrogance and hatred for America.
Funny, I seem to remember exactly the same rhetoric about GWB.
Re:The Living Constitution (Score:3, Informative)
No, actually you're a fool because you're wrong. State law trumps all federal law unless the state law is unconstitutional. In fact, any law that is found unconstitutional by the courts is null. That's why it's legal to smoke pot in some states, and is not federally. You obviously lack the basic understanding of what a constitutional republic is.
I did not say that and it is not some misquoted Wikipedia reference, all states have the same branches of government the federal government has, each state has its own constitution, that's what makes it a republic. But I don't have all day to give you a lesson. Just chalk it up to being ignorant, read about what constitutes a republic, and call yourself richer for the experience.
Like I said before, I was going to rebut them, one at a time, like I do with most comments, but once I read that, I quit taking anything you said seriously. Look, you seem like a nice enough guy, you're obviously just uninformed, everyone has been like that at one time in their life. But the good news is, they hide knowledge in books. Here are two books that make up the basis of our legal system. It's really fun to read about how this stuff all got formed. These two books introduce/expand upon the ideas of "natural law" and "a priori knowledge". If you don't know what that is, you really should! Anyhow, good reads if you plan on learning about constitutional republics. They're also really short. Most smart phones have book reader programs you can grab, these books can be downloaded in plain text, my favorite format, and you can stand on the shoulders of giants while you take a shit.
Here's a good place to get started
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant [gutenberg.org]
Common Sense by Thomas Paine [gutenberg.org]