All because a a few gay people wanted to have equal rights! Apparently gay marriage is so threating that Republicans are willing to undermine the basic premise of our government in order to achieve their agenda.

Isn’t that what it comes down to, Frank?

Nu-uhhhh!

Once again, I don’t know how more plainly and clearly it can be laid out for. The Founders did intend Congress to have more power than the President or the President more power than the Courts or the Courts more power than either of them. To suggest as you and midderpidge have that the Founders intended to create some kind of a hierarchy of power across the three branches is simply nonsense.

If you want to make the case that I’m misinterpreting the sources I’ve cited, fine, by all means go for it. But you haven’t attempted to do that. You’ve simply dimissed Supreme Court decisions, the Federalist Papers, history books and the words of Thomas Jefferson. It’s especially absurd to assert that the Founders intended to make Congress the most powerful of all three branches without backing up your claim given the Founder’s strong feelings about the “excesses of democracy.” From an essay by DAVID N. MAYER, Professor of Law and History at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio:

Examples of the Founders disdain for democracy abound in early American political writing. The Federalist supporters of ratification of the U.S. Constitution touted it as a remedy to the  excess of democracy that existed, practically speaking, in most of the state governments at that time. (Thomas Jefferson, in later criticizing the Virginia Constitution of 1776, explained that its defects  chiefly, the concentration of power it gave to the legislature  could be explained by the fact that it was one of the earliest American constitutions, adopted at a time when Virginians were still  novices in the science of government. ) For example, Virginia s Edmund Randolph, a member of the 1787 Convention, reminded his fellow delegates that their mission was  to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored, namely  the turbulence and trials of democracy. Samuel Adams championed the new federal Constitution in his own state, Massachusetts, because it was not democratic:  Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself, he noted, echoing the classical model s theory,  There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide. Alexander Hamilton, in a June 1788 speech urging his fellow New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution, declared:  It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity. And James Madison, writing in perhaps his most famous Federalist essay, No. 10, noted that  democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths. He went on to argue that only in a republic,  by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, and particularly in a republic spread over an enlarged  sphere of territory, like that of the United States, would the rights of individuals be secure.

http://users.law.capital.edu/dmayer/Blog/blogIndex.asp?entry=20050606.asp

The solution to the problem of “excess democracy” was a system of checks and balances in which all three branches of government were each co-equal in their ability to reign in the excesses of unconstitutional actions of the other.

Here is yet another authoritative source, quoting the Founders directly without distortion, that makes clear that our system of government was intended to be co-equal.

The Founders did NOT intend Congress to have more power than the President or the President more power than the Courts or the Courts more power than either of them.

Has I gots it right, Massa?

* You may be right about one thing. I must have been crazy to get into any kind of debate, discussion, argument, or whatever with an anal – compulsive, obssessed narcissist like you.

…but then again, I’m a juvenile wise-ass too, so what do I know?

Frank, now tell me, do you admit that the only “authority” you’ve bothered to cite here in defense of your position willfully distorted the text he was quoting? Because if you can’t admit that then, well, there’s no point in arguing because you aren’t just stupid, you, as near as I can tell, also have some kind of serious mental disorder.

The structure of the Constitution and the intention of the Founders is plain: Three co-equal branches of government such that each branch has a check on the power of the other. I have cited Supreme Court cases, history books and the Founders themselves to back this up.

How you can attack liberals in the manner in which you do but not understand the most basic principles of this country’s Constitution it simply astonishing.

Cool your jets.
Lose the image of pounding conservatives into the dust.
Let go of the need to defeat and humiliate your “enemies.”
There, now.
Better now?
OK
Breathe in through your nose.
Breathe out through your mouth, a trifle longer.
Repeat until calm.
I’ll be back later.
I’m sure this will take a while.

Me: I’m sick of you saying I’m stupid all the damn time.
-
Dad: Ive never said that in my life. Honestly you must me retarded to think that kind of dumbass garbage. What is wrong with you?

And I remember thinking, “You just called me stupid for thinking you’ve called me stupid, how am I even supposed to be able to argue with that?” No idea why its occurred to me to share that just now…

Anyway, my Rock Scissors Paper point is that, while each of those things as an individual entity can perform different tasks, relative to each other they weild equal, well lets call it “trump” power I suppose. If I failed to make that clear in my sleepy buzz then I, as preening, juvenile smartass/wiseass, humbly apologize.

On a final note, if I say I’m logging off before you insult me, and then I log off, and then you do, in fact, insult me… um, what exactly was wrong about that on my part?

Rex Mundane agrees with me, but takes time out to mock me. This of course proves that the idea that liberals are condescending ill -mannered elitists is all in my head.

…wait, I… agree… with Frank? I thought you were trying to argue that, well to use my superclever analogy again, that Paper doesnt have the constitutional right to cover rock, and must be able to be overruled by rock and scissors because its not supposed to have that power for fear that it may abuse its paper-ness or something.
Also, how does pointing out that youve called me stupid in the past in an attempt to hurt my feelings and are likely to do it again (as you have, in fact, indirectly, done) suggest that I’m a condescending elitist? If pointing out factual trends that make you seem a certain way suggests I’m condescending, or ill-mannered, or elitist… well damn, honestly I dont have a Then-statement to finish this with because theres nothing I could truthfully, reasonably say that wont offend you as much as objective truth seems to.

I suppose, “… so I m just gonna stop typing now … before Frank calls me stupid again and totally hurts my widdle feelings,” was not typed with any negative intent toward me, is that it?

So after you type that, I repeat, after you type that, before I have said anything about you, then you say, that I have said something to offend you.

You weren’t being stupid, you were being a wiseass. I apologize for calling you a condescending elitist. You’re actually a preening, juvenile smartass.

And no wonder you didn’t provide a link and no wonder your “source” edited the actual line from the Federalist Papers. The full context is below. On reading it you will find that Madison was actually arguing the exact opposite of what your “source” implies:

This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other — that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.

But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it should be fortified. An absolute negative on the legislature appears, at first view, to be the natural defense with which the executive magistrate should be armed.

Frank, you’re a moron.

It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices. Were the executive magistrate, or the judges, not independent of the legislature in this particular, their independence in every other would be merely nominal.

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

His argument is that Marbury v. Madison was itself a power grab that through the balance of government over to the Courts and this is must be undone by Congress. But to make his case he so seriously distorts the intent of Madison’s words in his quotation of Federalist #51 that one can only assume he was willfully trying to deceive. Naturally, he knows that would-be supporters such as Frank will never bother to look at the original document because he knows his supporters are mushbrained morons and he treats them accordingly.

Seriously, Frank, you really ought to have more respect for yourself to allow yourself to be treated like that.

Frameone, in his struggle to get the last word, tries to finesse me by saying that I always try to get the last word.

Apparently, you have googled “coequal branches” and by posting every reference to “coequal branches” that you can find, you can somehow rationalize that you have proved it is so.
BTW “coequal branches” = ‘about 14,600 hits’, one of which contains this sentence “As to the Times ridiculous allegation that governmental power was  carefully balanced between three  coequal branches …it just ain t so.”
And more:

The system of checks and balances that the Times refers to is a system where power is loaned to the government, by the people, and checked by the segmentation of that government into three strongly independent branches. The Founders hoped that this segmentation would prevent any one branch, or faction, from gaining too much permanent power.

These branches were never meant to have equality in perpetuity. In fact, James Madison wrote in Federalist # 51 that  it is not possible to give to each department an equal power…In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates .

Interesting, yes?

Now that we have seen how the magician does his trick, it is no longer entertaining.
Can I get an

Idiot.
Hysterical
Typical
??