Well, yes. Of course, the Constitution is relevant today. It's still the law of the land, so that's stating the obvious. Is there really anyone in this country above the age of 8 who doesn't understand the Constitution is the legal framework of the nation? I hope not.

--Abbreviated--

(BTW, I find it extremely interesting that the libertarian and tea party mantra of Constitutional avoidance is being used ceaselessly against a president who taught constitutional law in one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Obama's toes probably know more about the Constitution than any poster on this board, including me.)

http://washingtonexaminer.com/chapter-ii-the-myth-of-the-rock-star-professor/article/2508418

Time magazine gushed in 2008 about Barack Obama's 12-year tenure as a law lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, saying, "Within a few years, he had become a rock-star professor with hordes of devoted students."

That may have been true during his first two years, when he ranked first among the law school's 40 instructors, with students giving him a rating of 9.7 out of a possible 10.

But law student evaluations made available to The Washington Examiner by the university showed that his popularity then fell steadily.

In 1999, only 23 percent of the students said they would repeat Obama's racism class. He was the third-lowest-ranked lecturer at the law school that year. And in 2003, only a third of the student evaluators recommended his classes.

His classes were small. A spring 1994 class attracted 14 out of a student body of 600; a spring 1996 class drew 13. In 1997, he had the largest class of his tenure with 49 students. But by then, his student rating had fallen to 7.75. Twenty-two of 40 faculty members ranked higher than Obama.

Some former faculty colleagues today describe Obama as disengaged, doing only what was minimally required and almost never participating in faculty activities.

And, unlike others on the Chicago Law School faculty who published numerous articles in legal journals, Obama's byline did not appear in a single legal journal while he taught there.

By comparison, more prominent legal scholars on the Chicago faculty wrote frequently. Federal Judge Richard Posner published 132 legal articles from 1993 to 2004, and federal Judge Frank Easterbrook published 32 legal articles from 1992 to 2004.

Obama has often cited his days at the law school as an important part of his preparation for the presidency. At a March 30, 2007, fundraiser, for example, he said, "I was a constitutional law professor, which means, unlike the current president, I actually respect the Constitution."

From 1992 until 2004, Obama taught three courses: "Current Issues in Racism and the Law," "Voting Rights and the Democratic Process," and "Equal Protection and Substantive Due Process."

Obama wasn't a professor; he was a lecturer, a position that the Chicago Law School said in 2008 "signifies adjunct status." He was elevated to a "senior lecturer" in 1996, the year he was first elected to the Illinois Senate in Springfield.

The new faculty status put him on par with Posner, Easterbrook and a third federal judge, Diane Wood. As the Chicago Law School explained, senior lecturers "have high-demand careers in politics or public service which prevent full time teaching."

Senior lecturers were, however, still expected to participate in university activities. University of Chicago Law School Senior Lecturer Richard Epstein told The Washington Examiner that Obama did not do so.

Obama, Epstein said, "did the minimal amount of work to get through. No one remembers him. He was not a participant in luncheons or workshops. He was here and gone."

Robert Alt, a former Obama student, echoes Epstein, telling the Examiner that "I think it's fair to say he wasn't engaged in the intellectual life of Chicago outside of the classroom."

Alt is director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Rule of Law Programs and a senior legal fellow.

Alt said, "When you have faculty giving faculty lectures, you'd literally have packed rooms in which it's not unusual to have just all the big names of the university. It wasn't unusual to see Easterbrook and Posner, and it wasn't unusual to see the Nobel laureates attending as well."

Even so, Alt said, "I never remember ever seeing Obama in the audience."

Obama was also a no-show for the faculty workshops, nonclassroom lectures and moot court cases judged by sitting members of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals of the U.S. Current Chicago Law School professor Lisa Bernstein said faculty lecturers are still encouraged to participate in as many such events as possible.

The pattern of minimal performance at the Chicago campus was not an exception to the rule for Obama. In the state Senate during the same years he was lecturing, Obama voted "present" nearly 130 times, the most of any legislator in the chamber.

When then-Sen. Hillary Clinton made Obama's state Senate voting record an issue in their Democratic presidential primary contest in 2007, the New York Times said it found at least 36 instances when Obama was the lone "present" vote or was one of six or fewer lawmakers casting that vote.

And during his lone term as a U.S. senator, according to Gov Track.us: "From Jan 2005 to Oct 2008, Obama missed 314 of 1300 recorded or roll call votes, which is 24.0%. This is worse than the median of 2.4%."

Well, yes. Of course, the Constitution is relevant today. It's still the law of the land, so that's stating the obvious. Is there really anyone in this country above the age of 8 who doesn't understand the Constitution is the legal framework of the nation? I hope not.

But, no. Equating the Declaration of Independence to anything other that what it was intended to do is simply off base. The colonies were making a case for breaking from the yoke of foreign authority as practiced by King George III. To insinuate that it provides a basis for breaking away from our own system of government is simply wrong-headed or wishful thinking. It does not.

Because, if you were to say the Jeffersonian reasons in the Declaration of Independence give us a foundation to rise against our own government, then you are talking about succession. And the absolute last thing any of those preparing to go to war with England wanted to see was a splintering of the colonies. That would have been suicide.

The same applies later to the delegates to the Constitutional conventions. A fractured nation would have been totally opposite of why they gathered in the first place, which was to replace the Articles of Confederation. They had proven themselves to be disastrous because they did not create a glue strong enough to tie a nation together and put it on an (almost) equal footing with others.

Indeed, the Constitution itself was originally drafted in such a way that splintering would be avoided (hence, no mention of the issue of slavery, which surely would have driven a wedge between slave-holding colonies, let alone the delegates themselves, many of whom were slave-holders.)

Look, Obama is not King George III. Obama is not putting up soldiers in citizen's houses, he is not unilaterally exacting taxes on goods to go to his private treasury, he is not impressing citizens to man his ships. He is not building forts of his own army in cities around the country.

For the most part (although not totally), he's trying to do what he said he would do when he ran for the presidency twice. The majority of people said OK and elected him. When they elected him, they theoretically elected his ideas.

But, two years after his first election, the people also elected a House of Representatives with a majority of the members being not of Obama's party or policies. We've had gridlock ever since. That is exactly the way the system was designed to work by dint of the wisdom embodied in the Constitution and the way is balances powers.

Conservatives should rejoice that the provisions of our legal framework of government have not allowed this president nor any other to run amok. The existing system reined in Andrew Johnson when he tried to undo much of what had been accomplished by Union victory in the Civil War. The existing system brought down Richard Nixon for his attempts to use executive agencies for political purposes. The existing system quashed FDR's attempt to pack the Supreme Court.

If Barak Obama oversteps his authority, the same thing will happen to him.

You don't need succession. The system is still rock-solid as it is because the Constitution IS being followed and will continue to be followed.

(BTW, I find it extremely interesting that the libertarian and tea party mantra of Constitutional avoidance is being used ceaselessly against a president who taught constitutional law in one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Obama's toes probably know more about the Constitution than any poster on this board, including me.)

I think they are supportive of raising taxes on other people and corporations but not themselves.

I sell a 100% synthetic palm tree engine oil. It's good for 10,000 miles and is a renuable resource.

I had a chain of repair shops that marketed it to the general pubic, pricing it just $5 more than your basic oil change. They found that many people say they want to be greener and more environmentally conscience but when it came to costing them just a couple of dollars to do so they choose not to. They and I have discontinued carring this particular product.

They may say they are for higher taxes but not when it comes to their personal pocket book.