Constitution / Bills & Declarations of Rights Quotes
He had been asked by other delegates what Franklin thought they had just created.
In a 1949 dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago Jackson claimed the majority view would “convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”
Opponents of the strict separation of church and state use this quotation to support their view. However, Story herein describes public sentiment, not what was passed and ratified in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. See {614309} and {614310} for his statements from the same work that show that there was no question in his mind but that church and state are separated by the Constitution and the First Amendment.
The Declaration of Independence of the United States was signed that day.
Falwell was a religious fundamentalist who advocated religion vigerously participating in politics.
Many politicians were arguing that giving the intelligence agencies more power to wiretap, bug and hack into personal communications despite the 4th Amendment’s strictures argued that the public was in rational fear of terror attacks and had a right to be protected.
The debate had come to an impasse over the issue of voting and taxation by state equally or proportional to the population. Witherspoon warned of the consequence of there being no agreement on some form of unity.
In the early 1900's there were major labor disputes between Colorado miners and the mine owners (the Colorado Mining Wars). Colorado Governor James H. Peabody ordered in a thousand troops under the command of Bell. Replying to the charge that his treatment of the miners was unconstitutional:
In 1872 a proposed Constitutional amendment was debated throughout much of the country. The proposed “Christian Amendment” to the Constitution, recognized the Bible, God, and made Christianity the state religion requiring religious tests of public officials including belonging to an organized Christian Church. “Deists” as used then referred to people who had a general belief in a Supreme Being but did not belong to any formal or organized church.
He was commenting on the Constitution that had come out of the 1789 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and did not yet have the Bill of Rights.
