Facebook, now and then, serves up fodder...

...which is almost too good.

Check out this article.

And, then I was hunting around on the same topic and found this one by the same author.

Dahlia Lithwick appears to make the same mistake that a lot of people in modern American fall into--believing the test of Constitutionality resides solely in the Judicial branch of out government. Oh yes, that may be the current practice today, but that does not mean it is the best one, or even the way it was intended.

I defer to these words that Clarence Carson writes in his book, Basic American Government:

On the question of whether or not the courts have the ultimate power of interpreting the Constitution, Jefferson answered this question emphatically in answer to a letter raising the question in 1820. "You seem . . . to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions," he wrote to a correspondent. But that, Jefferson said, is "a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy." (263)

In contrast to the current practice, think about what would happen if each branch of government (the Senators, Representatives, and President in addition to the Supreme Court) thought carefully over the constitutionality of any new law or bureau under consideration. Actually, Christine O'Donnell's remarks quoted at the beginning of the second article linked above sounded rather refreshing.

This is why I am at least slightly excited about the new Congress' intentions of reading the Constitution at the beginning of their session and requiring statements of derivation of Constitutional authority in new laws.