Constitution Part Dos

In Article 4, Sections 1 and 2, Clause 1 of Section 2, it talks about how each state would respect the other state's laws. It then goes on to say that Americans have the same "Privileges and Immunities" throughout the United States. Andy asked us in the assignment to think about what that would mean for gay marriages. In the beginning it would mean that whether the state decided if that was permitted was up to them and the other states do as they please. If you then read on it contradicts itself by saying that citizsens have the same rights everywhere in the U.S. That was interesting to me how they never really noticed that with certain things that part of the Constitution could be misleading.

Now if we move along to Article 6, Section 3, they start to discuss how the government officers shall be asked to take an "Oath" to state that they will uphold the Constitution but no religious test will ever be administered. This seems completely fair to me being that I am not prejudice and think that no matter what religion you are it shouldn't matter. It does seem a little odd however that they would choose religion as part of this section. Why not race? It should have said no race, religion, gender, etc should matter when being appointed a government official as long as you uphold the Constitution. Think that needs to be revised.



If the Constitution restricted the government from our right to practice our religion, speak, publish and express our views, petiton, or ask the government to change the law, then why have so many people been persecuted for doing what our Founding Fathers said they were able to do. People have been abused, put in jail for just doing some of these things yet they were allowed to so what's the problem? An example would be when the Blacks wanted to be treated as equals to White men. They petitioned, wrote articles in papers, and asked the government to help them out. What did the government do? Segregrate them even more and let everyone (citizens and police) abuse them and put them in jail. What made them so different that they couldn't be protected by our FIRST amendment?!

The 4th amendment states that police must have warrants to search people, their houses, or their belongings. Andy asked us if we thought that it was contradicted by the MTA, library, and airport searches. I think that I understand why people might say that this is a contradiction but I think that those things are done for the well-being of others. Which makes them ok. Most of these places that people are searched at are high-risk places for terrorist attacks or just crazy people. If it's to protect our safety I think they can be called an exception to the 4th amendment. By the way, the 4th amendment is crap anyways because I tried to pull that on the cops and they told me that was fine that they would just stake out at my house making sure no one left until they got a warrant.