On the bright side, most Americans should know that the 1st Amendment Does Not Cover Burping.

I'm depressed. I could not name more than two Simpsons.

The First Amendment thing I've got down pretty well.

Clearly the Right to Own a Pet is found in the Penumbras of the Constitutional Right to Travel (in a car, with a dog wagging its tongue out that passenger side window.)

You have to get through the Constitutional Right to Drive and the Constitutional Right to Windows, but the line of authority is pretty clear otherwise.

There is no right to own a pet. That's why cities can ban certain pets like ferrets.

...By the way, I count six (not five) freedoms explicitly listed in the First Amendment:...

I'm still wondering which of those rights the President of the Unted States of America thinks the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia "recognizes".

Joint Statement by President Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah
Crawford, Texas
April 25, 2005

.....The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia recognizes the principle of freedom upon which the United States was founded, including the freedoms enshrined under the first amendment of the United States Constitution.....

Still, I'm told (constantly) that freedom is on the march.

And, apparently, Mr. Bush and AG Gonzales claim certain inherent constitutional authority to do this or that. Can't say as I put much faith in their grasp of constitutional law in light of the above.

Hmmm...

But freedom of religion is actually two clauses. The establishment and free exercise clauses.

And Cruikshank (never overruled) sez that assembly and petition are essentially one right -- freedom to assemble and to petition are not separate, the protection is for assembly to petition. (It's never been overruled, altho obviously the 20th century cases do treat them as separate matters, and transmute assembly into a broader right to associate).

I've got a son that was 1'st in his class, and a daughter that was third in hers. The educational elite are to busy sliding condoms on cucumbers, than teaching the founding documents of their own country

You forgot to mention the right to dance in the (almost)nude. The first amendment has been so broadly interpreted that it's no surprise that people think it covers other things.

There is no right to own a pet.

Yet.

First Amendment law is pretty arbitrary, as Houston Lawyer points out (by the way, Dale, we all know the Establishment Clause was not intended to protect individual rights). Most things that could get people in legal trouble in the status quo are adequately punished by private sanctions (saying naughty words at inappropriate times; libelling someone, etc.) Kids are better off knowing how to put their condoms on properly.

As depressing as this is, at least people are only ignorant as opposed to actively misinformed.

Think of how many people get bizzare ideas about criminal procedure and legal ethics from Law &Order.

I got six of the five 1st A. rights (free exercise/establishment) and the 6 Simpsons. Woo Hoo, let's all go for chocolate frosty milkshakes.
Pet ownership is in the Declaration of Independence (pursuit of Happiness - as long as your dog is named Happiness and has run off with your slippers).

"no establishment of religion, free exercise, free speech, press, assembly, and petition."

I wasn't aware that we had a right to exercise. Guess I have to find another excuse for not getting off the couch after work...

I suppose I'm in the vast minority but I read "or interfere with the free exercise thereof" as referring to establishments of religion, not religion itself. Thus, Congress can neither establish a national church nor interfere with the various state established churches that existed at the time. However, there is no guarantee of individual free exercise in the First Amendment.

You'll notice that this is exactly analogous to the 'militia' interpretation of the Second Amendment, which is why it's so much fun to try out on Liberals.

Assuming people were similarly misinformed in 1791, I wonder what implications that has for "original understanding." Maybe the right to own a pet really is consistent with original understanding.

Anyway, everyone knows that you do, in fact, have the right to own a pet, since a pet is property and you have a 5th/14th Amendment right to property, subject to a possible due process deprivation. Of course, one might say the right to retain a pet is not the same as the right to acquire one, but why quibble when pets can be so cute?

This reminds me of a survey the ACLU or a university political science department did in the 1970s. The survey involved handing out copies of the Bill of Rights to random passersby and asking if they recognized the document. The survey results were quite depressing, with something like 1 in 20 having recognition (the one was a police officer, thankfully) of what the document was. Other guesses at its identity included communist propaganda.

All 10 of the bill of rights STOP the government from action. Every single one. Why is this so hard for lawyers to understand?

HankP; Go back and read the 'Bill Of Rights' These are not rights granted by the constitution and the government. They are in fact bans on the government from taking certain actions. Making a person testify against themself uder oath. Banning the government from quartering troops on you property. Banning the government from forming a church. Banning the government from stopping you from publishing a newpaper. banning the government from your religion. Banning the government from interacting in those things that are not stated in the constitution,that shall be left to the states..

All of the Bill of rights, are bans on the government.

Remember. If the government gave them to you. They can take them away. Hence, not a right. Just something those elected still dangle in front of you like a carrot in front of a mule.

I choose not to be a mule.

And I still say the right to own a pet (property) is just above the the right ti abortion.

Tylor Nyurden;

The proper order is;
Drum roll?

None, each carries equal weight.

Darn, I really thought it included my right to bear nachos (and eat them).

I would guess that as suggested above, people could probably identify Jessica "Ricky Martin's Fraternal Twin" Simpson and Ashlee "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Simpson more easily than the "Five Freedoms" of the First Amendment.

Lawyer K wrote:

I paid for a fancy-schmancy legal education (and have a law license) but actually learned everything I know about criminal procedure and legal ethics from Law &Order...and The Volokh Conspiracy, of course.

I feel so old, I got my legal education from Gilberts and Nutshells. But I had to pay some pretty hefty tuition to get to use that knowledge.

Fortunately for me, no one wants to redevelop my pets. Some of the neighbors want to kill the dogs, but that's a different fight. Fortunately, beekeeping is a favored agricultural enterprise, even in the suburbs, so my little worker girls get to fly all over the neighborhood, taking nectar and pollen without just compensation to the neighbors.

Farmer -- the right to a jury trial is one affirmative right found in the Bill of Rights; it says the government has to GIVE you something, rather than banning the government from doing stuff.

I hope Farmer will forgive me for addressing this:

Of course people know more about something that's on TV everyday and is very entertaining. What would more interesting is asking the same question of members of congress.

I agree about asking members of congress, but you make that statement as if the fact that people place more importance on entertainment than their basic and fundamental rights is perfectly acceptable. It may be expected, but it is nonetheless disturbing and unacceptable.

given your apparent opposition to Roe v. Wade, one day you may be thanking your kids' teachers for showing them how that condom works.

I shouldn't be opposed to the murder of my grandchildren??? You can't be serious.

It's MY job to teach my kids:

a)How to use a condom(if that is within the realm of my moral and religious beliefs)

b)How to live life in a manner that will prevent them from having to worry about such things as using condoms or getting abortions

and

c)How to properly accept the consequences of their actions should they fail to practice either a) or b) above without resorting to murdering their own child.

As far as I'm concerned, teachers can stay out of those areas of my child's upbringing and stick to teaching them things like, say, the bill of rights.

Obviously there's no right to own a pet.

Owning a pet implies the failure to sell the pet, thus affecting the prices of pets, and thus being connected to interstate commerce in pets.

So, clearly, owning a pet is subject to federal prohibition under the Commerce Clause.

Do I have this right?

I learned this in the eighth grade as RAPPS: Freedom of Religion, Assembly, Petition, Press, and Speech. I still remember it today, even after I've learned that the religious freedom part is two-pronged.

I did wonder, though, as a 13-year-old, how one dressed one's grievances. :)

All joking aside, I'm not sure how depressing this stat really is. Isn't the important data whether people know that there is an enumerated right protecting something, not which number that enumerated right is?

I've considered giving out smoking monkeys and business card sponges to clients in the past, but now the above AP story confirms my suspicions. If only I can do the disappearing tie trick in court...

Wow!

Thanks for all the replies.

I will start with the first and work down.

Porkchop: Beekeeping is favored why and by whom? The govt if it is favored today maybe not tomorrow. As for the pet thing. Do I get my property or not? You got beehives. So if your local govt decided that they could sell your bees to someone else. That would ‘manage’ them better. Give you your investment cost, less depreciation, and time spent. Then. Sell it to a real beekeeper that made more income, thus more taxes. What SCOTUS decision would you turn to? They can take your house. Bees are easy. Or. On your property line a giant multi-national chemical company has bought up all the ground around you, and they make organophosphate insecticides? I guess its just life. You don’t have a right to be free on your own property.

Chukuang;

I will be less obtuse. My children, while smart, and can learn the most complex issues, have not a clue about the Constitution. Why? Because the educational establishment would dissolve in one generation if people would understand our founding concepts. The people with doctorates in education are scared to death that we figure out what they are up to. Roe v Wade. Give me a break! Find that part of law that SCOTUS used. Or, just a thought. Find at least one elected congressperson to simply write a law that says ‘any woman shall not be denied an abortion’. See? Simple!

TomMH

No. There is a ban on the government from denying you a jury trial. Read it. Who conducts a Trial? Hummmm? The govt? Ah, well. The govt is denied the ability to stop a trial. See? Denies the Government from stopping the trial of ones peers. NEXT!

Sailorcurt

Being thoughtful and logical gets you nowhere here.
How asinine to think that you would be even capable of directing ‘your’ children’s activities! I am glad I am not you. The NSA is going to be swooping down on you very soon. Dissention like this will not be tolerated.

Chukuang
I use my kids as an illustration. They do have good heads. But. Not because of the school system. Inspite of the school system. And, yes, the schools are trying to turn kids into sex crazed Marxist. If you don’t believe that, you have not spent any time around a high school lately. Or, you teach in one.

Pendulum;
Yes. You have this right. The failure to sell something relieves you the opportunity of owning it.

Kovarsky

One at a time.

Terrorism. Well we can’t fight that. No spook work. No monitoring of foreign intercepts of communications. No profiling of people that killed 3,000 of our own on our own soils. Dictatorships, Ah? Saddam? Ring a bell? Can’t go into Iraq. How does the US take care of the other 20? Global warming? How many ice ages happened before the evil human walked the earth? Failure of military Intelligence? Get a grip. Talk to the 9-11 commissioner by the name of Gerelic about her official response that the FBI could not communicate with the CIA. And the huge reductions of spooks on the ground under Clinton. This is getting boring. Make a point.

Everybody has it all wrong.

YOU can't own a pet, but pet-owning is within the President's inherent Article II authority as commander in chief. Moreover, congress authorized the president to own pets as a lawful incident to that authority when it passed the AUMF in the wake of Sept. 11.

And even if you didn't think the AUMF authorized executive pet ownership, your interpretation doesn't matter, because the executive has the exclusive right to determine whether congress intenteded to grant him that right in making its resolution.

Although the President obtains pet-ownership rights pursuant to the AUMF, by means of that resolution he also acquired the right - no, the duty - to torture his new pets to secure America's safety.

But don't worry, the executive will not abuse its inherent pet ownership power to serve the ends of evil, because president Bush will not allow "egregious abuses of medical research," including "creating human-animal hybrids." So, in the unlikely event that such a pet should be the subject of a secret cloning chimera experiment, the executive retains exclusive inherent authority to have the Vice President shoot the Centaur in the face.

"responded."

"responded."

o never mind.

farmer56,

I never said anything about your grammar or punctuation. I think you have me confused with somebody else. I corrected my own mistakes. I would never comment about someone's grammar or usage unless they invite it by commenting on mine or deriding someone else's first.

That being said, I'm not being goaded into silly argument about what the frequency of ice ages has to do with modern global warming trends. Suffice it to say that the two are not statistically related phenomena. If that's not good enough for you, well, I suggest joining the administration's science team.

Furthermore, I have no idea what this means:

A very few people understand the Constitution. Why? Because, I've done this once, The Government has no desire, and, yes a fear, that in a single generation the people would revolt against the educators.

I've skimmed my last several posts in order to try to understand what you're saying here, but it's just lost on me.

Please forgive me.

Plain language. Again, the educators have no desire to inform the kids, the next generation, about the Constitution. Because the educators are in league with the lawyers, and are fast achieving the goal of controlling our culture.

What about the right to keep and arm bears..

I'm probably going to regret doing this, but. . . .

TomMH wrote at 2:32: "Farmer -- the right to a jury trial is one affirmative right found in the Bill of Rights; it says the government has to GIVE you something, rather than banning the government from doing stuff."

Then Farmer56 wrote at 4:35: "No. There is a ban on the government from denying you a jury trial. Read it. Who conducts a Trial? Hummmm? The govt? Ah, well. The govt is denied the ability to stop a trial. See? Denies the Government from stopping the trial of ones peers. NEXT!"

Confused by this, I went back and read the Sixth Amendment. It says, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial . . . ." This certainly sounds to me like a requirement that the government provide us with something (a speedy and public trial). Farmer seems to be trying to keep his original point alive by saying that what this actually means is that the government is prohibited from not providing a speedy and public trial.

But, Farmer, you could say that about any right. Your right to a 15-minute coffee break is actually a restriction on your employer, requiring him not to penalize you for taking the break. Your right to self-defense is actually a restriction on judges, requiring them not to punish you when you shoot an attacker in self-defense. And so on.

The positive/negative rights distinction is nice when you're painting in broad libertarian rhetorical strokes, but is fairly useless in practice. This is a fairly mundane exercise:

Amendment 1: the free exercise clause; but wait, this requires public schools to afford access to religious groups if they seek to use facilities open to secular projects

Amendment 2: the right to bear arms (for the purposes of preserving a militia) is free from government interference; but wait, some have used it to require the government to furnish gun licenses.

Amendment 3: ok, ok, I'm not a 3d amendment scholar. I admit it.

Amendment 4: right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures; but wait, the government must get a warrant

Amendment 5: there's two much here to name, but the just compensation clause is an affirmative right on its face

Amendment 6: uh, if you think this is a "negative right," read the amendment: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

amendment 7: same reasoning as 6: In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

amendment 8: no cruel and unusual punishments; but wait, penry claims require certain types of jury interrogatoris be delivered

SO PLEASE, spare us the the theory that the Bill of Rights is a list of restrictions rather than entitlements. Furthermore, please refrain from rebutting the argument that the positive/negative distinction is pointless by saying that "the positive right to an apple is the same as the negative right to be free from government interference with the acquisition of apples." that tack hurts, not helps, your point. it reveals the distinction to be one without significance.

Al Maviva: "I believe it is incontrovertible that the Second Amendment secures the right to keep and arm bears..."

Damn, you're silly!! Cut it out. You're dyslexic on the second. It supports at least partial nudity: The right to bare arms.

It is impossible to capture in words the cognitive dissonance going on while I try to read second amendment posts while watching Cialis commercials and Neil Cavuto.

I'm not sure how to spell Cavuto's name, by I earnestly hope I just got it wrong.

John,

I know - it's so stupid it practically chases its own tail. Not only is it stupid, but it's worse than those headlines convey. I saw several reporters/journalists on fox today tacitly advocate the position that not only was the media fabricating civil war, but that it was fomenting it.

I continue to be flabbergasted at how fervently our country can defend the right and duty to print cartoons in defense of free speech while it simultaneously denounces debate over warfare as seditious.

I'm now watching fox just to see how long they can go without mentioning the Katrina bombshell. It's been 2 hours. On the bright side, Norman Mailer was on Hannity and Colmes.

Prof. Giraffenstien is right, there's a clear petnumbra of "life, liberty and property" in the doo-doo process claws that the people (unless PETA members) have property, which includes pets.

Just a short example on being faulted for my restrictions on the govt v the rights of the people.

We will change fields of study.

A 'forced air furnace' Most all understand the term. Just,,,It is not forced air. Talk to any engineer worth their salt, and you will learn, that although you feel warm air moving out of the heat duct. What you really have, is a vacuum. created by the heat source and the result you feel is the the escape of the air created by the vacuum.

I'm sorry, I just can't resist. . . .

Farmer56 writes: "The 'right to a trial? Who does the trial? If the trial By the govt, and, the govt does not want to hold a trial. Whats to stop the govt from denying a trail? Well. The Constitution. It stops the govt, ie, the people that run the courts, from not having a trial."

Farmer, how are these two concepts different:

1. The Constitution stops the government from not giving you a trial.

2. The Constitution requires the government to give you a trial.

Get It Straight people. If the government gives it to you...The government can take it away. Spend a year or so to think about it. A few hours ain't working for you.

BT; Plug up your cold air registers and drop me a note when you thaw out!

Guest 42;

I shoot my neighbors dog I said I did it. Can the mayor fine me if I want a trial? If not why not? (because the 'government cannot deny me a trial) See?
Cops grab you with a bag of loot at a tellers window at a bank you just robbed? Get a trial? Hey your caught! But, somehow the government cannot deny you a trial! Wow! The constitution denies the government from not granting you a day in court! HEE! Restrictions on the government! Wow.
If we are not restricting the govenment? Who are we protecting ourselves from? Talk to you in a year or so.

Incidentally, re pets and the First Amendment: if I want to 'peaceably assemble' with a dog or cat, why can't I? The animals don't have the right, but surely part of my exercise of it is determining who I 'assemble' with.

Christ! Why is this so hard???? It is the Bill Of Rights. To protect the people. Protect the people from who? To protect the people from the Government.

Guest2
sorry if I confussed you with another poster. But, the constitution does not establish the court system. If I am wrong, you are going to have to quote that part of the constitution that mandates setting up the court system. The constitution sets up the the Supreme Court. Then, it leaves the elected to set up other courts. If Needed.

Sovereignty is protected from the people by the constitition. OR. we would be a democracy. not, a representitivive republic founded under the constitution.

farmer56 will be teaching "a dukes of hazzard theory of constitutional interpretation" in my hometown this fall.

And back to the point. Why people dont know the constitution? Because no one teaches the constitution. It appears from self proclaimed persons with a law degree, not even law schools teach it. But I guess when some go to that 'dukes of hazard' seminar, anything you would learn would be better than blissfull ignorance.

We are a sovereign people because we are a represenitive republic. Pure democracy is anarchy. sorry for the short hand version of my thoughts.