The bastardization of the 14th Amendment

This has been sitting in my folder for commentary for too long. Time won't allow for me to write the long piece I'd originally envisioned for this. I'd rather get this up. It is too good - and too important - to leave sitting in my drafts folder.

Courts: Death by 'Due Process'
Lino A. Graglia, WSJ Opinion Journal

"Thomas Jefferson warned that judges, always eager to expand their own jurisdiction, would 'twist and shape' the Constitution 'as an artist shapes a ball of wax.' This is exactly what has happened.

The Constitution is a very short document, easily printed on a dozen pages. The Framers wisely meant to preclude very few policy choices that legislators, at least as committed to American principles of government as judges, would have occasion to make.

The essential irrelevance of the Constitution to contemporary constitutional law should be clear enough from the fact that the great majority of Supreme Court rulings of unconstitutionality involve state, not federal, law; and nearly all of them purport to be based on a single constitutional provision, the 14th Amendment--in fact, on only four words in one sentence of the Amendment, 'due process' and 'equal protection.' The 14th Amendment has to a large extent become a second constitution, replacing the original."

It often amazes me that one amendment to our Constitution can be so dangerously misconstrued. Let's not forget the silly "citizen at birth" privilege given to every child born of illegal aliens, thus making the entire family undeportable in violation of original intent.