I think that, once again, you're trying to stretch words from the Constitution far, far beyond their actual meaning.

The Bill of Rights could be considered a "standard of weights and measures" only if one has no idea what "standard of weights and measures" actually means.

Matt

You do realize (or perhaps you don't) that the process by which those amendments were adopted is set forth in the Constitution.

You're advocating ignoring part of the "supreme code law of the land" in order to reflect the primacy of the "supreme code law of the land".

You've circled back and killed your own argument.

Matt

I am saying we really didn't need those amendments to accomplish what was eventually accomplished. It could have been accomplished with our original Constitution if we had followed it better.

It is interesting that our Founding Fathers gave us Ten Amendments as a form of Bill of Rights.

Why are morals important if there is no religious test for public office and a proscription on purely religious moral laws?

It would be more cost effective to simply promote the general welfare of any given state. We could have built state of the art infrastructure in the same time period; as an opportunity cost. Only the general Warfare, a common Offense, or the general Badfare would require the (national and socialized) use of weapons of mass destruction.

Alternative fuel technologies could lead to advances in fuel cell technologies as well.

I think "conduits to markets" can be justified both as infrastructure that ensures a republican form of government to each State, and as public sector means of production which can better utilize scale economies available to that sector, and lower our tax burden without the use of direct taxation on income.

By that reasoning, a federal, underground mass transit system to each state capital could be justified since it could guarantee access to a republican form of government in each state. If a conduit is built, it could also include other infrastructure such as energy, and industrial waste management systems that can help our environment.

Each state could interface with the federal system with its own system.

Along with a process for adding new amendments.

If you're going to appeal to the authority of the Founding Fathers, you necessarily apply the same credence to all of their works.

In other words, if you state that proving the ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights was an act of wisdom and virtue, then so was the contemporaneous act of providing the amendment process.

Matt

It is something religionists forgot.

We have a McCarthy era phrase in our pledge for a reason. It could be considered a form of civil right, to request true witness bearing to our social contracts and laws.