Which is the greater assault on the Constitution?

Question

The McCain-Feingold law or the Patriot Act?

Why?

Answer 1

McCain-Feingold lost the freedom of speech before an election

Answer 2

I do not see any particular assault on the Constitution related to McCain - Feingold. It might be considered an assault on the political system in general, but I do believe that it was an honest attempt to reign in campaign finance discrepancies. Even though it is wholly ineffective in some areas due to loopholes installed.

As to the Patriot Act. It does indeed have Constitutional implications when the tenets of this act are imposed against American citizens. I have not yet seen evidence of inpropriety related to it, but the possibility does exist. I was against much of the Patriot Act, but concede that some sections were absolutely necessary. Such as again making it possible for intelligence and police agencies to share information. Further I do not believe the Patriot Act should be made permenant. Instead it should have periodic review to ensure protections against abuse or over reaching by policy makers of any administration.

Answer 3

Depends on your brand of thinking. Frankly, the revamped Patriot Act does curtail some privacy and civil rights guarantees, but McCain-Feingold essentially sold out taxpayers, by hog tying the amounts of contributions a person can forward to their candidate. I advise that you read both bills throughly. You'd probably agree that the Patriot Act is the worse of the two, if you believe in this pseudo-War on Terror. If you believe the rich elite are working the election laws to keep the rich and elite in power, then McCain-Feingold is the worse. As stated in the begining, depends on your own interpretation.

Answer 4

The patriot act is a far greater assault ^^ J j ^^ up there is a jerk. The patriot act paves the way for me to be labeled a terrorist subversive and thrown in jail for stating that. not to mention it says w/o a court order the Fed can tap my phone and arrest me and take all my stuff, just on the idea that I could be a terrorist without any proof.

Answer 5

Um, the Constitution is like the Ten Commandments, any transgression is utterly unacceptable in the eyes of the law. You can't quantify such a thing.

Answer 6

9/11

Answer 7

The Patriot act, because it takes away our freedom from unreasonable searches and ushers in the totalitarian big-brother style, all knowing and all controlling government.

Answer 8

You gotta go with the Patriot Act. I mean come on, campaign finance reform vs. the government tossing it's citizen's right to personal privacy in the can. You have to believe that if the Founding Father's of this country, who were all pretty independent, "let's come up with a Constitution to protect our citizens from the excesses that often arise in governments", minded kind of guys, were alive today, they would be dressed up in Native American costumes, looking for a ship full of BUSH tea to attack in protest to the "Patriot Act".

But then hey, the Founding Fathers were humans and politicians to boot. Who knows, if they were alive and in politics today, maybe they would be sitting in their offices, on K Street, in DC setting up lunches and golf trips with the likes of Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff. Who knows?

I do believe your question has merit if you dig deeper.

From what I gather, McCain-Feingold restricts donations to political parties to $2000 and it restricts news organizations from printing/broadcasting presidential campaign ads within a certain period of time prior to an election. Many of its opponents fear that it is a violation of the First Amendment. Is it? Well let’s look at how the First Amendment reads.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
To abridge (according to Webster’s Third) means to “to diminish (as a right) by reducing.”

But wait! There already are some abridgments on the press. A press agency can be prosecuted for knowingly printing or broadcasting something demonstrably false, known as committing libel and slander, respectively. Obviously, neither is applicable to McCain-Feingold.

Telling the press when they, by law, can and/or cannot transmit non-slanderous or non-libelous information sounds like abridgment to me.

Has Congress passed this bill? They have. Has the president signed it? He has.

I want to know two things: the reason the legislative and executive branches agreed to this and why we citizens were asleep at the switch long enough to let it happen. Too boring? Not “sexy” enough? There’s one more thing I want to know: is the upholding of this bill by the judicial branch a harbinger of a slippery slop? In my government class, I learned that the SCOTUS often bases its decisions on precedent; they make their decisions based on previous ones (Brown v. the Board of Education of 1954 being a notable exception; it went 180 degrees away from Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896; the latter gave a legal basis to “Jim Crow” laws; the former dispatched them).

If one form of freedom of expression is muzzled, will that be the end of it? Or will the branches of government make more such laws, basing them on this one? Will it get to the point where others (like we participating here at Yahoo Answers) cannot transmit our opinions, informed and uninformed, on presidential candidates or anything else whenever they want? That’s how the SCOTUS concept of precedent works, yes?

As for the monetary—soft money—limitation, outside of funding criminal enterprise, since when is it constitutionally justifiable to tell an American citizen, rich or otherwise, what he/she what can or cannot do with his/her money? And what about this (Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1)?

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
(Though a state can't deny equal protection, does that mean that the federal government can? Help me, legal eagles.) Under McCain-Feingold, is protection applied equally to the man of modest means who wants to contribute two hundred dollars to the Democratic Party in the name of his small business and to the big-time CEO who wants to contribute $200,000 to the same in the name of his large corporation? Will the man/corporation who contributes the larger amount have a greater influence on, say, Senator Lieberman, than the first one? Maybe. So what? Let’s take another hypothetical situation and suppose that 10,000 members of a large professional union or a religious group contribute twenty dollars each to the Republican Party. Will they have influence on its candidates? Maybe. Again, so what?

What is wrong with influence, in and of itself? Influence can be large or small, good or bad. Is the potentially large influence of a big money contributor always bad? That’s how this normal citizen reads this SCOTUS decision. In judging that the constitutionality of McCain-Feingold is valid, the SCOTUS applies unequal protection of the law to the respective influence of a rich man/entity and an man/entity of modest means.

Being rich and having influence is being made to be illegal, because of that unspoken assumption: rich people are bad, every last one of them. Will it stop there? Who will be declared to be “bad” next? Who’s the next group that will be deemed to have too much of a sinister influence on political campaigns?

So while both the MFL and the Patriot Act have been questioned on the grounds of there constitutionality, I'd still have to go with my original pick becuase the PA takes something away from every single American, while the MFL only limits those who are trying to have extra influence on policy makers, and that, in the grand scheme of things is a VERY small number of people when compared to the 300 million people affected by the PA.

But back to your question, from an "assault on the Constitution" perspective, I'm all in on the Patriot Act mounting the greater assault - no contest.

Answer 9

Hi Mark,

Im your Big Brother and I'm watching you right now through your computer screen.

I see that you didnt run a comb through your hair this morning and by joe...what the heck are those things on your pajamas?

Please tell me those arent unicorns?!?!?

Answer 10

Your question.