US Constitution

I came across two news items today that might be of interest to those in the Tea Party movement who want to read the Constitution in its "original intent". The "strict constructionist" view of the document is that the government can not do anything not specifically granted to it by the Constitution . Back in 2008 Jack Kevorkian ran for congress-and lost-partly on a platform of assisted suicide being protected by the 9th Amendment. The argument being that the amendment protects peoples rights that are not "explicitly specified elsewhere in the Constitution". Under the "original intent" view this would be a protected right of the people. The second item was in a Cal Thomas column in The Virginian Pilot for today. He noted that some members of Congress wanted the original wording of the Constitution read into the record when recently done in Congress. That would mean that the enslaved population of black Americans would only count as three-fifths of the white population: the "Three-fifths Compromise". In my opinion the Constitution must be seen-and read-as a "living document" that can change or evolve over time. That's what the Supreme Court is there for; to determine if new legislation violates the basic protections in the Constitution. That's why after two hundred and twenty two years the same document still rules this country.