Showing results for "the-amendments" in World

Mark R. Levin has made the case, in numerous New York Times best-selling books - Men in Black, Liberty and Tyranny, and Ameritopia - that the principles undergirding our society and governmental system are unravelling. In The Liberty Amendments, he turns to the founding fathers and the constitution itself for guidance in restoring the American republic.

This book is the story of how the "Baby Ninths" came to be and what they mean. Unlike the controversy surrounding the Ninth Amendment, the meaning of the Baby Ninths is straightforward: they protect individual rights that are not otherwise enumerated. They are an "etcetera, etcetera" at the end of a bill of rights. This book argues that state judges should do their duty and live up to their own constitutions to protect the rights "retained by the people" that these "etcetera clauses" are designed to guarantee.

How Free Speech Saved Democracy is a revealing reminder that First Amendment rights have often been curtailed in efforts to block progress, and that current measures to reduce hurtful language and to end hate speech could backfire on those who promote them.

The Electoral College that governs America has been with us since 1804, when Thomas Jefferson's supporters redesigned it for his re-election. The Jeffersonians were motivated by the principle of majority rule. Gone were the days when a president would be elected by acclamation, as George Washington had been. Instead, given the emergence of intense two-party competition, the Jeffersonians wanted to make sure that the Electoral College awarded the presidency to the candidate of the majority, rather than minority, party.

Bringing with him the practical experience that comes from having owned a high-end gun store—catering largely to law enforcement—and as a competitive shooter and self-defense trainer, Correia blasts apart the emotion-laden, logic-free rhetoric of the gun-control fanatics who turn every "mass shooting" into a crazed call for violating your rights, abusing the Constitution—and doing absolutely nothing to really fight crime.

After 72 arduous years, the fate of the suffrage movement and its masterwork, the 19th amendment, rested not only on one state, Tennessee, but on the shoulders of a single man: 24-year-old legislator Harry Burn. Burn had previously voted with the anti-suffrage forces. If he did so again, the vote would be tied and the amendment would fall one state short of the 36 necessary for ratification. At the last minute, though, Harry Burn’s mother convinced him to vote in favor of the suffragist, and American history was forever changed.

The year 2020 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave many women in the United States the right to vote. The struggle for suffrage lasted over six decades and involved more than a million women; yet, even at the moment of the amendment's enactment, women's activists disagreed heartily over how much had been achieved, whether it was necessary for women to continue organizing for political rights, and what those political rights would bring.

The era known as Reconstruction is one of the unhappiest times in American history. It succeeded in reuniting the nation politically after the Civil War but in little else. Among its chief failures was the inability to chart a progressive course for race relations after the abolition of slavery and rise of Jim Crow. Reconstruction also struggled to successfully manage the Southern resistance towards a Northern, free-labor pattern. But the failures cannot obscure a number of notable accomplishments, with decisive long-term consequences for American life.

By the time of his retirement in June 2010, John Paul Stevens had become the second-longest-serving Justice in the history of the Supreme Court. Now he draws upon his more than three decades on the Court, during which he was involved with many of the defining decisions of the modern era, to offer a book like none other. Six Amendments is an absolutely unprecedented call to arms, detailing six specific ways in which the Constitution should be amended in order to protect our democracy and the safety and wellbeing of American citizens.

Last Rights: The Fight to Save the 7th Amendment shines a bright spotlight on a grave but often overlooked effort by large corporate interests to undermine America's civil justice system and consumer rights. Trailblazing Plaintiff's lawyer, Jeffrey B. Simon, wrote this book as a rallying cry for anyone who has ever been wronged by a rigged system of laws. Through riveting tales of real courtroom drama, Simon exposes the insidious influence of corporate greed and political power weaponized to repeal personal rights and weaken public safety.

Falsehoods have been at issue in every presidential impeachment proceeding from Nixon to Trump. But, until now, no one has analyzed why public lies might be impeachable offenses, and whether the First Amendment would provide a defense. Noting that speech by public employees does not receive the same First Amendment protection as the speech of ordinary citizens, legal scholar Catherine J. Ross proposes the constitutionally viable solution of treating presidents as public employees who work for the people.

Bart Stupak, a nine-term Democratic Congressman from Michigan’s First Congressional District, brought two unshakable principles with him to Capitol Hill in 1992: a firm belief in the sanctity of life, and the conviction that health care was a right for all Americans and not a privilege for the fortunate few. Studies indicating that 45,000 Americans died needlessly every year for lack of access to health care inspired Congressman Stupak’s tireless efforts, often at great personal cost, to pass lifesaving legislation while remaining true to his right-to-life principles.

We hear it every day: government spending is out of control. Yet, despite all the rhetoric coming out of Washington about the need to cut spending, we continue to go deeper and deeper into debt. If we're serious about restoring America to fiscal health, we must do something about government spending, not just talk about it. So argues U.S. Senator Mike Lee in his new book, The Freedom Agenda.

In 2016, a group of armed, divinely inspired right-wing protestors led by Ammon Bundy occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the high desert of eastern Oregon. Encamped in the shadowlands of the republic, insisting that the federal government had no right to own public land, the occupiers were seen by a divided country as either dangerous extremists dressed up as cowboys, or as heroes insisting on restoring the rule of the Constitution.

A vast censorship regime has smothered America's digital marketplace of ideas, squelching free speech on vital policy issues. Its supporters regard its benefits as morally and politically beyond question. They contend it's carried out by private social media platforms, not governmental authorities. In Free Speech and Turbulent Freedom, Michael J. Glennon offers a timely and incisive response. The censors are short-sighted, he argues.

When our founding fathers secured the Constitutional “right of the people to keep and bear arms”, they also added the admonition that this right shall not be infringed. It is the only time this phrase appears in the Bill of Rights. So why aren’t more people listening? History has proven that guns are essential to self-defense and liberty - but tragedy is a powerful force and has led many to believe that guns are the enemy, that the Second Amendment is outdated, and that more restrictions or outright bans on firearms will somehow solve everything. They are wrong.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution codified the principle that the government should play no role in favoring or supporting any religion, while allowing free exercise of all religions (including unbelief). More than two centuries later, the results from this experiment are overwhelming: The separation of church and state has shielded the government from religious factionalism, and the United States boasts a diverse religious culture unmatched anywhere in the world.