PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
GOP Debate: Where Candidates Stood on Constitutional Rights :: 09/18/2015
On issues ranging from gun laws to birthright citizenship, the U.S. Constitution was a major topic of discussion during Wednesday’s Republican debate at the Reagan presidential library in California.
Candidates talked a lot about the rights laid out by three amendments in particular, the Second, Tenth and Fourteenth. Here are highlights from the exchanges:
• Fourteenth Amendment: (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.”)
The issue of birthright citizenship took up several minutes of the debate, with Donald Trump, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina and Sen. Rand Paul opining on how it could be restricted without amending the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause:
Trump: “Well, first of all, the the Fourteenth Amendment says very, very clearly to a lot of great legal scholars not television scholars, but legal scholars that it is wrong. It can be corrected with an act of Congress, probably doesn’t even need that.”…
Fiorina: “[T]he truth is, you can’t just wave your hands and say ‘the Fourteenth Amendment is gonna go away.’ It will take an extremely arduous vote in Congress, followed by two-thirds of the states, and if that doesn’t work to amend the Constitution, then it is a long, arduous process in court.”…
Paul: “Well, I hate to say it, but Donald Trump has a bit of a point here. The case that was decided around 1900 was, people had a green card, were here legally, and they said that their children were citizens. There’s never been a direct Supreme Court case on people who were here illegally, whether or not their kids are citizens.”
• Tenth Amendment: “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.”
The Tenth Amendment sets limits on federal power. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee promised that, if elected, he would appoint Supreme Court justices who are strong believers in states’ rights:
I’d make darn sure that we absolutely believe the Tenth Amendment. Every governor on this stage would share this much with you. Every one of us our biggest fight wasn’t always with the legislature or even with the Democrats. My gosh, half the time, it was with the federal government who apparently never understood… that if it’s not reserved in the Constitution, then the Tenth Amendment says it’s left to the states. But somebody forgot to send a memo to Washington.
Mr. Paul brought up the amendment in discussing federal drug laws:
I would like to see more rehabilitation and less incarceration. I’m a fan of the drug courts which try to direct you back towards work and less time in jail. But the bottom line is the states. We say we like the 10th Amendment, until we start talking about this. And I think the federal government has gone too far, I think that the war on drugs has had a racial outcome, and really has been something that has really damaged our inner cities.
• Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, a former attorney general of Texas, called himself the “strongest supporter of the Second Amendment on this stage today.” He also talked about how he led a campaign with 30 other states against a Washington, D.C. gun ordinance struck down by the Supreme Court in its 2008 landmark Second Amendment ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller. In Heller, for the first time, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution protects an individual right to keep and bear arms at home.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush spoke critically of the push by Democrats to enact stronger gun laws following the deadly Newtown, Conn. school shooting:
I do think the natural impulse on the left Hillary Clinton, immediately after one of these horrific violent acts took place, immediately said we need to have federal gun laws. President Obama almost reflexively always says the same thing. And the net result is, you’re going to take away rights of of law-abiding citizens, the 99.999% of the people that are law-abiding citizens.
Here’s a transcript of the full debate.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/09/17/gop-debate-where-candidates-stood-on-constitutional-rights/
