Constitutionally Incorrect

and morally wrong



I ended up my last posting with the statement that I disliked other unconstitutional laws which I would write about later but today I have decided to write about what I will call an unconstitutional use of our Constitution.

There is a man who appears quite often on television posing as a constitutional expert, always waving a small booklet around which he claims to be a copy of the United States Constitution but from his stand on many subjects it doesn't appear that he spends enough time in the reading there of. I can't really fault him for that because it has become extremely difficult to find anyone who knows a great deal about that document, upon which all our laws are supposed to be anchored.

I would venture a guess that the majority of our citizens have, at least, heard of the First Amendment to the Constitution which guarentees us, among other things, the freedom of speech and the Second Amendment gives us the right to keep and bear arms but after that it's no man's land.

Today I want to take a few minutes to discuss the meaning and implications of the Sixth Amendment to that same Constitution which is usually thought of in criminal court cases but also has been applied to political campaigns. In short, this amendment gives everyone the right "to be confronted with the witness (accuser) against him". Admittedly this is in reference to criminal cases but as to political campaigns, it has been the law that no unsigned political attack ads could be published either in newspapers or hand bills. Even if the law has been repealed it would be morally wrong to publish, in any manner, unsigned attack ads in-as-much as it would deny the one being attacked the right to face their accusers in the court of public opinion.

The event which brought this Constitutional Amendment to the forefront was the publishing of just such an ad in one of our local newspapers. It is an attack on one of our local candidates in an election where early voting has already started and the next paper out is tomorrow.This ad was simply signed "Paid for by concerned citizens of McNairy County" which in itself does nothing to identify the attacters. Lest I be accused of dereliction of duty, I immediately fired off an e-mail to the editor of the offending paper protesting the publication of such an ad but as most of you already know, me not being a member of the uppercrust ruling elite of McNairy County, I have not received any response from it. With that I will close this posting but will update it later in another posting if I ever hear anything from it. Thanks, Stay tuned, - William