“Hillsdale history professor Paul Moreno in his new book How the Court Became Supreme: The Origins of American Juristocracy. He provides readers with a comprehensive history of the concept of judicial review, beginning in England in the 17th century and through to the latest developments in the US Supreme Court. Moreno’s conclusion is that judicial review was a good idea but has gone terribly awry.”  Read more here.  

“Law schools hate the Constitution because it limits them and empowers you. That is why “constitutional law” often involves finding ways to get around the Constitution. It was otherwise designed to maintain a wall between your private life and government. Law schools profit by breaching that wall in any way they can, even (or especially) if it means designing rules or legislation that break it.  Read more here.

“As patriots, we may feel that the situation is hopeless.  To avoid catastrophe, we need to work to share the news of the excesses of the current administration and support all efforts of the Republicans in the House of Representatives to bring the corruption, unfairness, and dishonesty of the Executive Branch to light.”  Read more here. 

"The Bill of Rights was essentially a compromise between the competing factions and a win for the Anti-Federalists"  Read more here.

It’s interesting to notice which historical events we celebrate and which we largely ignore. Sometimes on radio shows you’ll hear a commentator groping for content do a piece on “This Day in History.” “On this day in 1952, Elmer Jenkins rolled a peanut 2 miles using only his nose to earn donations for the Red Cross.” (Note: full disclosure here, I made that up; don’t go looking it up on Wikipedia!)
 
Most patriotic Americans remember “Constitution Day,” September 17th, the day in 1787 when the Constitution was signed; but I don’t know anyone who even remembers, let along celebrates “Ratification Day,” June 21st, the day in 1788 when New Hampshire’s ratification put the Constitution in operation. On September 17, 1787, the Constitution was just a piece of paper (actually four pieces of parchment), just like any other draft document. As opposed to most legal documents which are put into effect with signatures, signing the Constitution had no legal effect whatsoever. Ratification did, at least when nine states had done so. So why don’t we celebrate Ratification Day with fireworks and concerts the way we do Independence Day? Asking for a friend.
 
Another day we should celebrate, and don’t, is December 15th, especially here in Virginia. On that day in 1791, Virginia’s ratification of ten of the twelve articles proposed by Congress to “amend” the Constitution, put what we now call the Bill of Rights into effect (it wasn’t routinely called the Bill of Rights until after the Civil War, when Amendments 13-15 were added).
 
The debate over the idea of adding a “Bill of Rights” to the Constitution didn’t even come up until 5 days before the convention adjourned. George Mason thought it a good idea (“It would give great quiet to the people”); others saw no need for it, most of the state constitutions in effect at the time had declarations of rights, a federal one would be redundant. Mason’s motion to form a committee to draft a Bill of Rights (BoR) was defeated and its absence became the primary reason Mason and two other gentlemen refused to sign the finished document. At the Virginia Ratification Convention in 1788, Partick Henry chided the Federalists over the omission: “Would it consume too much paper?”
 
Massachusetts is the state that actually started the ball rolling on a BoR. In exchange for the Anti-Federalists votes to ratify the Constitution, the Federalists at Massachusetts’s convention promised them they would be allowed to submit recommendations for both amendments to the Constitution and articles for a new Bill of Rights. After Massachusetts “broke the ice,” most other states followed Massachusetts’s example and submitted their ideas along with their ratification certificate.
 
James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” (a title he argued was inappropriate) is in fact solely responsible for creation of the Bill of Rights. Had he lost the election to the First Congress, I’m certain a Bill of Rights would today not exist. Congress was busy building a government from the ground up and had no interest in adding a Bill of Rights, but Madison’s dogged determination to fulfill a campaign promise he made to the Baptists of Orange County, Virginia met with success. Wikipedia has a very comprehensive page on the Bill of Rights, showing the various iterations the articles went through as they worked their way through Congress; it is worth the read.
 
As a testament to the success of the Bill of Rights we now have myriad copycats: “Patient’s Bill of Rights,” “Passenger Bill of Rights,” “Cell Phone Bill of Rights,” “Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights.” Might there be a “Ferret-owners Bill of Rights” being drafted as I write this?
 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously proposed adding a Second Bill of Rights in 1944. Americans, he thought, had a “right” to a decent job, an adequate income, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, a decent house, adequate medical care, social security (of course) and a right to an education. If people had trouble providing these accoutrements for themselves, government would provide them. Congress didn’t take the bait (thank goodness) and propose the various amendments necessary to bring FDR’s idea to fruition and the proposal died. But you’ll occasionally encounter people today trying to resurrect it.
 
I think I’ve mentioned that from 2013 to 2017 I was writing a weekly column called “Constitutional Corner” and sending these at times lengthy essays (sometimes they would run to 8 pages or more) to an extensive subscriber list. I’m going to put my “pen” down for the remainder of December and enjoy the holidays, but I can’t countenance any of my faithful readers suffering from Constitutional Minute “withdrawal,” so, in keeping with our Bill of Rights Day theme I will send you on or before 20 and 27 December, essays I wrote on 18 and 21 December 2014 entitled: “Life Without the Bill of Right” Parts 1 and 2. I hope you enjoy them (warning, there might be some dated material therein).
 
I think we can all agree that the contention of the Federalists in 1787 that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary (“Why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do”[i]), have turned out to be shockingly wrong. Without the Bill of Rights, America would today be a far different place in terms of individual freedom. The Supreme Court has given the federal government powers it created out of thin air or through expansive interpretations of ambiguous language; and without the Bill of Rights.…. Well, you’ll see in the next two essays.
Have a very Merry Christmas and don’t forget the “Reason for the Season.” See you next year.
 
[i] Alexander Hamilton writing in Federalist 84
 
To download any previous Constitutional Minute essay in .pdf format click here.

Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., for The Breakfast Club. 
​

Interview With an Actual Journalist

• Here’s one way to turn your love of the Constitution into a Career . . .  

​By Claudia Henneberry 
December, 2022

​Meet Quin Hillyer, an actual journalist, who currently writes for the Washington Examiner as a senior commentary writer and editor. He has worked at the American Spectator as executive editor, the Washington Times as senior editorial writer, and as contributing editor at National Review Online.  Hillyer’s articles have appeared in many national publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, National Review, the New Republic, the (UK) Guardian, and Investor’s Business Daily. 

Quin grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he remembers being inspired at age 12 as nearly a year-long Bicentennial celebration, in 1976, of the Declaration of Independence, enveloped the country.  “It made a huge impression on me,” Hillyer expressed, as he saw the entire country caught-up in the commemoration of the document that was the mission statement for our Constitution.  He said that in 1976, “there was none of this breast-beating of how awful we are” as a nation.  It was there that Quin began a lifetime of respect and admiration for all things American, with a thirst to learn more about our founding and the Constitution.    

He graduated from the Isidore Newman School in 1982 and went on to acquire an A.B. in government and theology in 1986 from Georgetown University.  Hillyer speaks fondly of his experience at Georgetown as a freshman in his honors government program which was taught by renowned Constitutional scholars.  He says after Georgetown, because of his keen interest in both disciplines, that he “hopped around between both the political world and journalism for a while, like you’re not supposed to do.”  

To begin his career after graduation, Quin returned home to New Orleans and became a correspondent at the Times-Picayune.  He cut his journalistic teeth while covering sports.  Because of his love of our founding documents, Hillyer was a Reagan appointee to Public Affairs in late 1986, however, his real experience in politics was launched in 1987, while serving as research and issues director for U. S. Representative Bob Livingston’s gubernatorial campaign. 

Following his calling once again, Hillyer felt he “was meant for journalism” which led him in 1989 to become managing editor of Gambit Weekly, a newsmagazine in the New Orleans area where he gained notoriety “doing investigative pieces on the rise of David Duke and pointing out (Duke’s) neo-Nazi ties.”

Quin boomeranged back into politics for 5 years, serving as press secretary for Congressman Bob Livingston.  But, by 1996, he realized he missed writing again.  With the battle between his two passions raging, Hillyer told me that columnist Fred Barnes “advised me to go make a name for myself away from D. C. and make my way back.”  That’s when Pulitzer-Prize winner Paul Greenberg at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette hired him to join the editorial staff.  Quin says he “did not particularly enjoy the circumstances of the job.”  He was hired as lead editorial writer at the Mobile Register in 1998, where he earned the Carmage Walls Commentary Award and the Green Eyeshade Award, making good on the suggestion by his colleague, Fred Barnes.   

Hillyer was ready to return to Washington in 2006 to navigate covering the political scene once again as executive editor with The American Spectator before assuming the post of Associate Editorial Page Editor at The Washington Examiner in 2008.

Today, Quin resides in Alabama and writes furiously and brilliantly on the matters plaguing the nation.  

I asked Hillyer why journalism has become more of an activist profession rather than what it was originally intended to be, a watchdog over the government for the people protected by the First Amendment.  Hillyer responded that “very few (journalists) try to be neutral or watchdogs.”  He reminds us that at the turn of the 20th century, the “rise of the objective neutral media was a good thing,” however, today, that neutrality “has disappeared.”  

“For the left, everything is politics,” lamented Quin.  “So many writers are covering things they know nothing about.”  According to Quin, media-types mostly consider ideology when hiring writers these days, unless they are conservative media employers who mainly look for skill and talent.  When I asked how many writers in the country know the Constitution and what the law means, he responded, “less than 10%.”  That explains a lot about the establishment media.

As an actual journalist, Hillyer digs for the facts.  One of his latest investigative reporting projects for the Washington Examiner centers around the controversy at James Madison’s Montpelier and the “hostile takeover” of the property, as well as at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.  Hillyer further characterizes the takeover from his article, “Woke Montpelier leaders envision massive land grab in Virginia” in this way:
“. . . the wholly untrustworthy “trusts” that operate James Madison’s Montpelier and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello — the homes of the two most influential thinkers who laid the foundation of this nation’s grand experiment of liberty — are on a malevolent mission to trash the reputations of those two great founders.”
 
This is personal for Quin and to those of us who value the truth and the legacy of our brilliant founders.
 
In 2000, Quin penned a column asking Congress to establish a commission of scholars to commemorate James Madison’s 250 birthday in 2001 and use it as an occasion for civic education.  He said the commission “should sponsor or encourage high school essay contests about the Constitution, that the scholars should meet together at least once, and a few other things.”
 
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) “saw the column and turned it into a bill.”  Quin writes of the event on March 16, 2001: “The scholars were appointed; they held a symposium in an ornate room in the Library of Congress on March 16, 2001, with me as the only reporter present for the private part of the session; and they promulgated a call for civic education. There was a grand dinner that night at a banquet hall in the Library of Congress honoring Madison, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Sessions presiding and Justice Antonin Scalia among the numerous public officials in attendance. By happenstance, I rode the elevator with Scalia, but I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say.”

In his Washington Examiner commentary, “The woke assault on James Madison feels personal, but everyone should care,” from July 20, 2022, Hillyer continued to recall that day, “For me, it capped a day in which I had driven the 95 miles out to Montpelier, then only in the early phases of its restoration from what the DuPont family had done to alter it radically, and I enjoyed a fascinating private tour of all they were planning. The curators said the law creating the commission and the commemoration had hugely helped draw attention to Montpelier’s mission of celebrating the life and thought of the Father of the Constitution.”

The Montpelier Foundation, formed in 1998, has been busy for two decades restoring the estate of James Madison, accurately preserving his legacy while also telling the critical story of slavery and its impact on the history of the plantation.  After all, one of the first acts of the Foundation was to locate descendants of Montpelier’s slave population to honor their stories in the exhibits on the property. 
 
Archaeologist, Matthew Reeves, was hired by the Foundation Board in 2000 to oversee the rigorous endeavor to uncover details about the lives and work of Montpelier’s enslaved. Quin reports, ”In 2001, shortly after Madison’s 250th birthday celebration, Montpelier organized a three-day Slave Commemoration Gathering , and over the next 15 years, it received numerous national awards for permanent and prominent exhibits on slavery’s role there.” I should note here that Reeves was fired from his Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration position this year.
 
Quin visited Montpelier several years after 2001 for another private tour, then again 5 years later, when the “restoration” was almost complete.  He said that by that time, “the foundation was well into its efforts to excavate evidence of the lives of the slaves who lived there.”  In context, that undertaking was appropriate and wise. Little did I know that almost all context would be thrown aside, with slavery essentially becoming Montpelier’s predominant focus.”

Incrementally, monied leftists and radical organizations have successfully orchestrated a coup upon the Boards and the Trusts tasked with operating both Monticello and Montpelier.  Mary Alexander, an authentic and verifiable descendent of Madison’s manservant, Paul Jennings, has said that Montpelier is now “a black history and black rights organization that couldn’t care less about James Madison and his legacy.”

​Acknowledging that slavery was “an unjust and horrible system,” she nonetheless said that Montpelier has a unique mission (to honor Madison). “There were hundreds of thousands of slaveowners but not hundreds of thousands who wrote the Constitution,” as Alexander so precisely asserted the obvious as documented by Quin Hillyer in “The ideals – and homes – of Madison and Jefferson are worth defending from the leftists.” 

In his September 9, 2022, “James Madison’s Foundation, destroyed from within,” Hillyer determines, “. . . self-proclaimed “termites,” aided by a sympathetic media and discredited organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, have driven the foundation, put its financial health at great risk, and even flirted with a United Nations-aided land grab of the region around James Madison’s Montpelier by designating it one large UNESCO heritage site,” explains Hillyer.

Enter stage left, the National Trust for Historic Preservation at Montpelier.  “In 2017, the ascendant liberal leadership of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns Montpelier but by charter is  not  supposed to “have authority over either management or board governance,” created an African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, dedicated not just to the preservation of sites related to “significant African American history” but also to a “social justice … movement that uses preservation as a force for enacting positive social change … to realize equity-driven outcomes.”

In other words politics, not history.

Even on September, 17, 2022, Constitution Day, the ideological overthrowers decided to ignore the facts again.  Hillyer writes, “amid staff disruptions and swirling questions about its finances, the foundation created to honor the “Father of the Constitution” is scrambling to mark Constitution Day on Saturday with two woke, anti-Constitution panel discussions.”  Read “Saturday is Anti-Constitution Day at James Madison’s house.”
 
The latest on how Montpelier’s National Trust is faring, or not, read Hillyer’s “National Trust must worry about finances of Madison’s Montpelier,” and “National Trust CEO steps down amid unrest at James Madison’s Montpelier.”

“The plan is to establish Montpelier as a beachhead for radical reinterpretations of history. To a somewhat lesser extent, leftists have succeeded in doing the same at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.”  No, James Madison is not alone. 

Meanwhile, back over at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Quin continued his reporting on the matter this year by encapsulating Jeffery Tucker’s demoralizing excursion to Monticello on the Fourth of July.  From the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, to the exhibits and the tour guides, our beloved author of the Declaration of Independence is being besmirched and defamed in his own home.  

Affluent Democrat donors to social justice organizations populate the Board of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, so they can have their way with how history is rewritten at Monticello.  Books by Ibram X. Kendi and fans of critical race theory occupy the gift shop.  You can read “How and Why the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Trashes its own Namesake” here.

As the actual journalist, Quin Hillyer notes, “. . . but suffice it to say that the Sage of Monticello did more for human liberty and expansion of human knowledge than all but a handful of individuals in human history. The Left’s obsessive attempts to destroy his [Jefferson’s] reputation are both malicious and historically and contextually ignorant.”

Ultimately, Quin wisely chose writing over politics.  When asked why, he said, “I could have my own voice, rather than promoting someone else's interests/agenda. Plus, I really detested many parts of politics – and, I like to write.”  
 
We need more actual journalists like Quin Hillyer who dig for the truth, gather facts and report them so the people can decide.  Quin is that watchdog for the people on a quest to protect our heritage so future generations can know the truth.
 

 

I recently answered a question on Quora.com which read: “In the 10th Amendment, what does "to the people" mean?” The requestor was, of course, referring to these words:
 
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
 
Here’s how I answered the question (note: I get a half-dozen requests on Quora each day. I don’t take them all, but even when I do I tend to write short, succinct answers):
 
"The People are Sovereign…(A)t the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the People and they are truly the sovereigns of the country…the Citizens of America are equal as fellow Citizens and as joint Tenants in the sovereignty." (Chief Justice John Jay, writing in Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793)

Basically, the 10th Amendment implies that all political power not given up, through constitutions, to either the state or federal governments, remains (theoretically at least) in the hands of the ultimate sovereigns: the people.
 
Unfortunately, the 10th Amendment is largely a “dead letter” today, the Supreme Court long ago having given Congress plenary power not found in the Constitution. Today, Congress can spend money on anything its little heart desires, whether that object is found in the Constitution or not (see U.S. v. Butler, 1936 and Helvering v Davis, 1937). Congress can borrow money without limit, and tax us without limit. They can delegate their legislative power to the Executive Branch whenever they want (see Mistretta v. U.S., 1989). Today, nearly all political power lies with the federal or state governments, not with the people. The people appear to retain, for the time being, simply the power to elect their representatives and change those representatives when the previous choice reveals itself to have been wrong.
 
"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.” (James Madison, First Inaugural Address, 1809)
 
There is a lot more to the 10th Amendment than my short answer covers. For instance, while I claimed the 10th as a “dead letter,” implying it was devoid of meaning, the Supreme Court’s official stance, expressed in United States v Darby Lumber Co., was that “The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered” In other words, the court agreed with the basic premise that the Constitution is one of limited powers, which is essentially what the 10th says, and thus the 10th adds nothing new to our understanding of the Constitution. “Its purpose was … to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.”
There had been a similar statement in the Articles of Confederation (Article II), which read: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” Note that mention of “the people” was added in the 10th Amendment.
 
So, to summarize: All political power originates in the sovereignty of the people. They give up some sovereign to the national government through the U.S. Constitution and some to their state government through the state constitution; the rest they retain or reserve to themselves. If “we the people” would only remember that.
 
The Supreme Court has often ruled that certain powers are reserved to the states simply because they are not found in the U.S. Constitution; but what I find lacking in the Court’s logic is an acknowledgement that the state don’t have every power not given in the U.S. Constitution, they have only those powers given them in their respective stateconstitutions. The court seems to conveniently forget “the people.” (Of course, “the people” know none of this is going on because “the people” don’t usually read SCOTUS rulings -- except a few Breakfast Clubbers).
 
The Court occasionally rules that the national government simply lacks the power it is trying to implement, not necessarily that it is a reserved power of the states. An example: the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 mandated a "gun-free zone" on and around public school campuses across the country. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the federal government claimed the gun-prohibiting power was to be found in the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Without specifically mentioning the Tenth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no clause in the Constitution authorizing such a power. And so, the GFSZA was struck down, replaced two years later by a new law that did the same thing, claiming a different origin for the power.
 
If “the people” could ever figure out how to speak with one voice, I think they could be more powerful than even Joe Biden’s “we’ve got nukes” federal government. Granted, that’s a big “if,” but I can dream, can’t I?

Prepared by: Gary R. Porter, Executive Director, Constitution Leadership Initiative, Inc., for The Breakfast Club. 
​