Forgotten Amendment

My father, Olen Riggsby, wrote his take on the erosion of rights in this country.

In the declaration of independence Thomas Jefferson wrote , “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

It seems to me that the people we have in charge of our government today have largely ignored this concept. They seem to believe that they can institute any rules or laws that they see fit to further their own agenda. Even the Supreme Court has aided in this undermining of our Constitution by overreaching the powers they have been granted by this historical and precious Document. The Fourth amendment states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath and affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons to be seized.” The Court has repeatedly ignored this Amendment by permitting the use of “John Doe” warrants, and allowing Law Enforcement to search, seize and use as evidence from “anything that can be seen from a car window on a traffic stop”, to “ anything found while serving and implementing a warrant for something else entirely”. This is blatantly unconstitutional.

By using the “Interstate Commerce Clause”, they have been able to effectively legislate from the Bench their own ideas of what they believe this Country should be like, and in doing so, they have given the Federal Government powers and controls that the Constitution did not prescribe.

The Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people”.

Nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal Government given any power over Education, Energy, or a number of other things they now control. In no way do I mean to infer that I am against education or energy, or the Federal regulation thereof. What I am against is this being done without “the consent of the people”.

The framers of the Constitution realized that the world would change, and that the Constitution would have to change with it. The thing they wanted to prohibit was it being changed by the people in charge of the Government. To insure this they mandated that all changes be done as an amendment, passed by Congress and ratified by the States.

I do not contend that the Government’s involvement in these matters should be stopped, or that amendments should be ratified to make them Constitutional, (except in the case of search and seizure,) but I do think the people should demand that the Courts insist on all new Laws and Regulations be Constitutional, and if not then let Congress put an amendment before the People.