On 13 Jan 2008 05:23:49 GMT, SueDoeCyAnts
<pseudocy@labb.port5.com> wrote:

on Fri 04 Jan 2008 08:35:34p
Hugo S. Cunningham <checkwebsite@cyberussr.com> posted
in news:602un35sklobedujlf7murdjprip7vkvi7@4ax.com:

On 04 Jan 2008 21:30:43 GMT, SueDoeCyAnts
<pseudocy@labb.port5.com> wrote:

[...]

My sole point was to challenge your misunderstanding of the
term
"ex-post facto law," as it appears in the US Constitution.
There is a good discussion of it in Wikipedia, enumerating
different ways a tyrannical government might try create
offenses ex-post-facto, increase penalties ex-post-facto, make
convictions easier to obtain ex-post-facto, etc. They imply
that "amnesty laws" though technically ex-post facto, are not
generally struck down on US Constitutional grounds. (An
exception might apply, however, if amnesty for one man meant
loss of rights, eg. to be repaid, for another man.) But if you
wish to show me an amnesty struck down by US courts on "ex
post facto" grounds (with URL cite), I would be most
interested.

Paul says that he has NEVER proposed legislation that is
oppositional to the US Constitution, yet as I mentioned, the
proposal authorises an ex post facto application of his
legislation.

The proper method for redressing wrong caused by convictions
under bad law is clemency, communtation and pardon, not
retroactive applicability of law.

Ex post facto laws destroy faith in a governmental system, as
they create a foundation of shifting sands to guide
behaviours. This is the rationale for not allowing them.

Your "faith in ... government" argument against amnesty
applies equally against clemency, commutation, and pardons.
Indeed amnesty works better than the others, since the
people's elected representatives are forced to explain
themselves and be held accountable.

--Hugo S. Cunningham

SDC quotes Thomas Jefferson:

The sentiment that ex post facto laws are against
natural right, is so strong in the United States,
that few, if any, of the State constitutions have
failed to proscribe them. The federal constitution
indeed interdicts them in criminal cases only; but
they are equally unjust in civil as in criminal cases,
and the omission of a caution which would have been right,
does not justify the doing what is wrong. Nor ought it
to be presumed that the legislature meant to use a phrase
in an unjustifiable sense, if by rules of construction
it can be ever strained to what is just: The law books
abound with similar instances of the care the judges take
of the public integrity. Laws, moreover, abridging
the natural right of the citizen, should be restrained
by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac Mcpherson, August 13, 1813
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Definitive Edition,
Albert Ellery Bergh; Editor
Volume XIII; pp 326

Interesting Jefferson quote.

The context suggests he is objecting to ex-post-facto civil
lawsuits: ie what the defendant did was entirely legal when he
did it, even though the law has since changed. Defendants in
today's tobacco lawsuits and lead-paint lawsuits would enjoy
this quote.

The discontinuity between criminal and civil law has also been
raised in First Amendment free speech cases. Until the 1960s,
those offended even by truthful speech could shop for a biased
judge and biased jury to ruin a journalist with an exorbitant
civil libel verdict. The Warren Court's superb "NY Times v.
Sullivan" decision cut back the worst of these abuses, ruling
that freedom of speech (First Amendment) had to take priority
over the supremacy of jury verdicts (Seventh Amendment). Judges
are directed to overturn libel verdicts unless the speech in
question, presented as fact, was instead recklessly or
deliberately false. But wealthy plaintiffs can still ruin (and
intimidate) less-wealthy journalists with the high legal costs
of even a successful defense. Due to the special importance of
free speech, it should become routine to award legal costs
against both the plaintiff *and* his lawyer for frivolous libel
lawsuits.

But perhaps you are raising a broader concern, that "the
omission of a caution which would have been right, does not
justify the doing what is wrong" -- that just because the US
Constitution does not ban amnesty laws does not make them right?
I disagree. Prosecuting and punishing someone for something
the people now consider legal and legitimate is likely to bring
the law into disrepute.

But again, I am entirely agnostic on the wisdom of Ron Paul's
coinage legislation.

--Hugo S. Cunningham

On Jan 6, 2:07 pm, Bob LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

Michael Price <nini_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

That is the definition of a "Federal crime"

 So?  Why should the fact that the Feds don't want people to
do it mean that it should be punished?

Because that is what "we the people" decided when we set up the
Constitution. That those powers given to the government were there to
be exercised by the government.

And how does that make punishing people right?

"We the people" elected those representatives to decide what things
within their power to govern should be considered crimes.  They
decided.

If "we the people" don't like what they decided, then we should elect
new representatives to Congress.  The President doesn't have much to
say.  If it is the law, then he is *required* under the Constitution
to enforce that law; if he doesn't, Congress has the power to impeach
him, and should.  Also part of that Constitution that you want the
government to follow only when it is convenient for your ideology.

I don't want the government to exist at all.

If it does I don't want it to do unjust things,

so of course I don't want them to follow the constitution
when it's unjust. Do you want then to enforce the fugative slave
laws?

 If it doesn't hurt anybody then why is it a crime?

Because our elected representatives said it is, and "we the people"
wrote that Constitution that you want the government to follow only
when it is convenient for your ideology specifically enumerating a
monopoly power over money.

So because "the people" (actually a very small minority of them)
said so it has to be done?

Why?

and in this case it was.

Not in the least.  The law says what the punishment shall be for
violating that law, and so long as the law is followed, then
punishments are not "arbitrary".

They are not being punished for violating the law, even assuming
they did.

They are being punished for exercising first amendment rights.

Now you may say that the LAW is arbitrary, but that is neither here
nor there; the punishment is not arbitrary but in accordance with the
law.

If the law is arbitrary they punishment is arbitrary.

 The rule of law means that deciding whether something is a crime
is determined by what the law says.

Then Hitler obeyed the rule of law.

Of course it is.  If they had not broken the law, then the prosecution
would have been moot.

That's hardly been established. Martha Stewart went to prison and
it's hardly certain she broke the law.

If she did it was _by the government's own admission_ due to the investigation of her.

 No because nobody claimed they were legal tender.

Doesn't matter.  If they have the *appearance* of being legal, then
they violate the law.

So then chocoloate coin candy is illegal?

<>     Clause 5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and
<>     of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and
<>     Measures;

Congress has the power to regulate the Value thereof, which includes
the power to prohibit any sort of competing coin, which inherently
affects the value thereof.

The power to fix values of your own coins does not grant you a
monopoly.

 They even have the power to regulate the
value of foreign coin within the jurisdiction of the United States.

I don't see how.

It's supposed to be a free country

how can you decide what I should pay for a gold soveriegn.

<>     Clause 6: To provide for the Punishment of
<>     counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the
<>     United States;

That you don't seem to understand the plain words of the Constitution
means that you are off in la-la-loonytoonian land.

Nobody was counterfieting liar.

 Even if that were true that doesn't mean they can't abuse it.

The Federal courts define what it means to abuse it, not you.

So you think that's OK do you?