Bill Stewart wrote:
Marbury vs. Madison was an entertainingly kinky case, but the ability of judges to declare laws or executive actions Unconstitutional and therefore void is the main thing that's made the Bill of Rights effective (to the extent it has been.) The courts have often failed in that duty, but it's rightly theirs.
The alternative would be that the Constitution means whatever the executive branch of government says it means, and whatever the legislature says it means, ...
I believe that the intent of the Founding Fathers was that an armed populace would be familiar with the letter of the Constitution, and tolerate no creative reinterpretation of it by any of the three branches of Guv'mint.
As George Wallace once stated, "The country is run by thugs and federal judges."
He was one of the thugs, of course...
He rehabiliated himself through terrible suffering, repented his racist views, and made friends with Jesse Jackson. People can change. I can still remember from back in the 60's Mike Wallace reporting with a perfectly straight face on the "Negroid Characteristics" of some monkey skull found by a archeological expedition. One of the nice things about ignorance is that it is curable. Unlike Neo-Conservatism. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"