PROVISION 15 (From Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 2) A person cannot be elected to the House of Representatives unless he is an inhabitant of that State which he will be representing. This provision gives the people the right to not have any person sitting in Congress representing a State unless he is an inhabitant of that State. Taking the lesson from the British parliament, the founders did not want a person to represent a district without living there. At first, the Representatives were elected at large. It wasn’t until 1842 that Congress required the States to form Congressional districts so that each region of a State would be more adequately and fairly represented. George Mason had anticipated this necessity in the Constitutional Convention, saying …
[The House of Representatives] ought to know and sympathize with every part of the community; and ought therefore to be taken not only from different parts of the whole republic, but also from different districts of the larger members in it; which had in several instances … different interests and view arising from difference in produce, of habits, etc. We ought to attend to the rights of every class of the people. … The requisites in actual representation are that the representatives should sympathize with their constituents; should think as they think, and feel as they feel; and that for these purposes should even be residents among them.
By: By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer
Posted: March 28th, 2012
In the Supreme Court’s final day of arguments on the constitutionality of the 2010 health care law, the justices wrestled Wednesday with what happens to the law if they strike down the provision that requires the uninsured to buy insurance.
“I think a majority of the court believes that if it rules that individual mandate is unconstitutional, then the rest of the health care law probably cannot be saved,” reported NBC’s Pete Williams after hearing the 90 minutes of oral argument.
PROVISION 14 (From Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 2) A member of the House of Representatives must have been a citizen of the United States for at least seven years. This provision gives the people the right to not have any person sitting in the United States Congress unless that person has been a citizen for at least seven years. Recommended by the committee on detail, it was agreed that an immigrant should be exposed to American institutions and values for a time before being allowed to make decisions in Congress. George Mason commented …
I was for opening a wide door for emigrants, but did not choose to let foreigners and adventurers make laws for us and govern us. Citizenship for three years was not enough for ensuring that local knowledge which ought to be possessed by the representative. … It might also happen that a rich foreign nation … might send over her tools, who might bribe their way into the legislature for insidious purposes.
ObamaCare: The Democrats’ overhaul was supposed to increase access to health care. Yet construction on 45 hospitals has been shut down due to the legislation. This is a step back, not ahead. As part of their effort to eventually end all private health care, the Democrats placed a provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that in essence shuts down construction of new physician-owned hospitals and blocks existing ones from
Remember, the argument from START supporters since the beginning is that the treaty won’t compromise U.S. missile defense because the stuff about “defensive arms” is in the preamble, which isn’t legally binding. Here’s the key provision from page two: Recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, that this [...]
