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The World Health Organization calls for decriminalization of most drugs

In the middle of a shooting war an American citizen, who has taken up arms against the US, gets due process?

So if an American citizen had sided with the Germans in WWI, was training and sending people to kill US citizens we couldn't have killed him without a trial?
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Well you're the one who obfuscated the entire argument in your last post in a ridiculously confusing manner.

What exactly is your point? Can you rearticulate it?
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His point is very simple- I don't want to pay taxes and the government shouldn't be allowed to put me in jail for not paying them.
 
This is why libertarians sadly consign themselves to the fringes of American political discourse. Libertarians have incredibly important viewpoints that need to be highlighted, but they tend to be purists who insist that the nation be remade in the Ayn Rand image. And so they lose the ability to be taken seriously on issues they could actually impact, and instead are (generally correctly) written off as un-serious lunatics who want to dismantle everything the nation has achieved since about 1935.

This thread is the perfect case in point. The war on drugs leads to constitutional violations on a massive scale, that happen every day, generally to poor people of color without resources to fight it. Our resident libertarian could have added a lot to a thread about the war on drugs. Instead, he chose to re-litigate the income tax and derail the thread.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Well you're the one who obfuscated the entire argument in your last post in a ridiculously confusing manner.

What exactly is your point? Can you rearticulate it?
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I repeat yet again that the Constitution was written to limit the power of the Federal government. The only reason the income tax is constitutional is the curious passing of the 16th amendment. But the income tax should not be used to finance anything not specifically allowed in the Constitution. If you want to interpret the Preamble as allowing the government the power to do anything it considers to further the "general welfare" then there is no limit whatsoever to the power of the Federal government. So we just become people trying to tax one another for our own special interests and we start down the road to serfdom.
 
I'm not interpreting the preamble to "do anything it considers to further the general welfare," I'm specifically addressing the Taxing and Spending Clause which states that taxes may be levied "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

And to say that the only reason an income tax is constitutional is because it's in the constitution is hilarious.
 
Man the only reason we have the argument over guns is because it says that guns are constitutional in the second amendment!!1111
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
I'm not interpreting the preamble to "do anything it considers to further the general welfare," I'm specifically addressing the Taxing and Spending Clause which states that taxes may be levied "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

And to say that the only reason an income tax is constitutional is because it's in the constitution is hilarious.
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http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=57
 
DeaconSig said:
Well shit. If we are on the road to serfdom, then THINGS MUST CHANGE.
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totally bogus, dude

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tjcmd said:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=57
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I'm laughing because of the absurdity of the statement. It's completely irrelevant whether or not something would be "constitutional if it weren't for the Constitution explicitly providing for it." That's the whole point of the Constitution.

"The only reason that's true is because it's true" is roughly what you're saying.
 
RChildress107 said:
You do realize that amendments to the constitution are part of the constitution, right?

Is your argument that the 16th amendment shouldn't count because it backfired on the group that proposed it?
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My argument is that people who approved this 125 years after the Bill of Rights thought it would apply only to a very few citizens and that it would be at a very low rate. If you had told them that soon 50% of Americans would have to pay marginal rates of up to 39% this bad idea would not have gained traction.
 
tjcmd said:
My argument is that people who approved this 125 years after the Bill of Rights thought it would apply only to a very few citizens and that it would be at a very low rate. If you had told them that soon 50% of Americans would have to pay marginal rates of up to 39% this bad idea would not have gained traction.
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Well the article you linked provides zero support for that argument.

It seems like your argument then is that the amendment was poorly written to achieve its intended purpose. Sucks for the people that wrote it. It has no bearing on the provision's constitutionality since, well, its in the fucking constitution.
 
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The top 1% of the tax bracket paid under 30% in effective tax rate in 2010 and the average income of those people was $1.434 million. Excuse me if I don't lose much sleep over the top 1% ONLY making around $1 million a year after taxes.

As to the content of your post (after that somewhat unrelated statement of mine), it's too bad that the way the group promoting the income tax didn't come to fruition over the next century or so. That's how the cookie crumbles though.
 
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