Comment Re: Federal Bribery and Taxpayer Abuse. (Score 1) 76
I don't disagree but the problem is identifying when we jumped the shark. Which I think happened damn near 100 years ago now when the SCOTUS blinked and let a lot of the New Deal happen.
We have now gone so long without 'keeping up with Amendments' in terms of actually enabling the Federal government to do so much of what American's of all political stripes currently view as good/necessary/appropriate it is really difficult to take "Textualism" to the logical destination it really ought to be taken. The 'soft textualism' we get from current conservative wing of the court is probably the best we can really hope for.
If you really for example did a legitimate read of the 9th and 10th amendments, probably half or more of Federal laws are unconstitutional or at least could not be applied to 90% of the instances they are. It would break our society...
This is real problem people who immediately shut down conversations around national divorce, or moving toward greater State level sovereignty as in letting people start thinking of themselves more as "Virginians, Floridians, New Yorkers", etc rather than "Americans" can't accept. We let a 80 years of sloth and neglect pass by as far rigorously applying the Constitution and using the Amendment process for real rather than feel good issues like Senate elections, and as far as keeping the American experiment on course, I am not sure you can get there from here now.