In a message dated 6/10/01 12:33:58 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
   ravage@einstein.ssz.com writes:

     The Bill of Rights actlly grants no rights, it only limits what the
     government may do with respect to defining/restricting them. See
     9'th and
     10'th. It in effect sets out a list of prohibitions of things that
     can't/shouldn't be done. I challenge you to uafind a single
     'assignment'
     sentence in the first 10 amendments.
     With respect to the laws of the states, the Constitution only(!)
     stipulates that the federals must guarantee them to be
     representative. It
     says nothing about the actual form/function so implimented.

   Sorry, poor choice of language on my part. True, the bill of rights
   doesn't
   actually *assign* rights- it prohibits the federal government from
   making any
   laws that restrict them. Reading from amendments 1-10, and the othe
   articles
   of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to the states-
   and this
   was legal fact until the passage of the 14th amendment. But that 14th
   stated
   that (paraphrasing here) "no state may deny a citizen due process of
   law".
   The Supreme Court interpreted this (in effect, adding foot notes to the
   constitution) to mean that the Bill of Rights now applied to the
   states. I
   know that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that "states must
   honour
   the bill of rights". But look in Supreme Court decisions (which,
   legally, are
   pretty much an extension of the constitution). There, it is *clearly*
   stated
   that the Bill of Right's restrictions of the federal government's
   powers
   applies to the states as well. So when you say that the Constitution
   only
   says that states laws must be representative, you are ignoring the 14th
   amendment, and what it does to the relationthip between state
   governments and
   their citizens. But yeah, that's all I'm trying to say. Enough is
   enough.
   Ender