re: #118 goddamnedfrank

You asked me to ask this again so I will, how do you feel about the idea in the following quote of Gingrich’s?:

Does anybody know what “precedent” Newt is talking about?

No, I have no idea. I’ve heard of this idea before, but I still do not have the first clue about where it comes from.

And I don’t read the 14th Amendment as allowing Congress to define ‘personhood’. Section 1 of that Amendment reads as follows:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

This was written to overturn the Dredd Scott decision and establish that all people born in the US and under its jurisdiction were citizens. Where Congress came in is at the end, in Section 5:

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

This was intended to allow Congress to set up the legal frame work to enforce the new amendment, not to allow the Congress to define personhood. I very seriously doubt that Thadeus Stevens and the other authors of the 14th Amendment would have wanted to give Congress the power to define personhood, since that would give a future Congress the potential power to undo the equalizing work the 14th Amendment was designed to aid.