(no subject)

[yahvah.livejournal.com]

1) If any state makes any thing a tender in payment of debts which isn't gold and silver coin, then that state has broken the supreme law of the land vis-a-vis Article one Section ten.
2) All fifty states make federal reserve notes a tender in payment of debts.
Therefore:
3) All fifty states have broken the supreme law of the land.

Some of you want to say the U.S. constitution is irrelevant, or the interpretation of the U.S. constitution is somehow fallacious. I'd like to point you to Cornell Law School's site. Notice how there's a hyperlink in section nine for the direct taxes clause, and the link takes you to the sixteenth amendment. The U.S. went through the amendment process to invalidate an original law of the constitution, but the Federal Reserve Act merely went through Congress and then to the President's desk. The exact same thing happens with the war on drugs. We amend the constitution to prohibit alcohol, but we don't amend the constitution to prohibit a less harmful drug like marijuana.

Where's the irrefutable logic which shows how the U.S. doesn't have to amend the constitution?

Comments

[jennem.livejournal.com]

You're not making any sense.

It has to be consistent with the fact that only the feds can coin money and regulate the value thereof, which means, really, the only thing the states can consider money is what the feds make.

I'd say, that's a "yes." What that has to do with your interpretation on the limit of the federal government's power to create legal tender only in the form of a metallurgical coin, I'm not sure.

At any rate, I'm going to bed. I think my position is pretty well established in the 10+ comments that have been made. I'm comfortable leaving the conversation as is for others to read and consider.

[yahvah.livejournal.com]

I'd say, that's a "yes."

If you say that's a "yes," then maybe if the founders meant for any other thing to be money, they shouldn't have used the noun phrase "gold or silver coin". Maybe they should've thought of all those other metals which were already well-used long before they were even born?

[jennem.livejournal.com]

Maybe they should've thought of all those other metals which were already well-used long before they were even born?

Maybe it didn't really matter because states couldn't coin money in the first instance? State's can't make money, and they can't require their citizens to take anything other than gold or silver as legal tender.

The constitution explicitly limited the power of state governments to make legal tender anything other than gold or silver coin. (In addition to counting lower metallurgical elements out, it also counts out all other forms of legal tender, e.g. chickens, cotton, slaves (at that time), etc.) Are you seriously insinuating that such a limitation necessarily extends to limit the power of the federal government? There's a whole section limiting the federal government's power. If the Framers wanted to limit such a power, given the limitation on state power, don't you think they would have? If the Framers wanted "to coin money" to mean and only mean "to coin gold or silver money," don't you think they would have included such words? They obviously thought about using something other than gold or silver when they limited the power of the states.

That's really what you want to rest your argument on: the Constitution limited the states' power, so ergo, the federal government's power must also be limited to a gold and silver standard?