The legal rights in the Bill of Rights didn't exist until the 20th century Social media has been abuzz with the Bill of Rights, and in particular the 1st Amendment, recently. Many posts, explicitly or implicitly, trace the Bill of Rights to the Founders. That's wrong and leads to a poor understanding. A proper reading of the Constitution and the law reveals that, while the text was written then, these rights did not apply even on paper to the states until 1868, in fact until the middle of the 20th century, or even into the 21st century for the 2nd Amendment. “It is a Constitution we are expounding.” The Constitution sets out principles and goals, structures and limitations, and we must never forget that . It is law -- the highest law of the land , in fact -- but it is not code , which is detailed and often attempts to be exhaustively complete and explicit. The Constitution was written to provide a framework of balances by a group of flawed aristocrats trying to rebel from ano
I believe that lack of consistent and effective leadership during the pandemic has caused the most severe consequences, both in the economy and in health. Let's discuss leadership in this 10th, and last , installment in my series about COVID-19 . How are we doing? The pandemic itself is the real culprit Okay, before this goes off the rails, let's just note that the pandemic itself is the real culprit. This is a natural event, generally known to occur periodically and predicted by several to be imminent , and nobody "caused" it. (That includes China, though it would have been more helpful if they had been transparent earlier .) So, the virus is the bad actor here. Everyone is trying to respond to that microscopic antagonist -- some did better than others, but in general the vast majority of people and leaders were trying to do something . It is important to realize that a pandemic means the world economy was going to tank and that many people would die. There are so