The Shrinking Consitution

These guys have stopped even pretending to follow the Constitution (I bet most couldn't pass a test about what the document actually says even though most of them graduated from law schools).

Lawmakers want to retroactively levy punitive taxes on bonuses given to employees of bailed-out companies.

Democrats rushed a bill to the House floor on Thursday to levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at companies that have received at least $5 billion in government bailout money.

It would seem to me that the retroactive part is obviously covered by Article 1, Section 9:

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

But Clinton passed his tax bill retroactively in 1993 and no one on the Court seemed to mind, so I guess this clause of the Constitution is dead. As for singling out a very specific group for this law would seem to violate the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. But I guess that amendment only applies to the states and not the Feds since Congress has issued tons of laws from specific tax breaks, progressive rates, affirmative action, etc... that favor or penalize specific groups over others.

A long time ago, shortly after starting this blog in 2002, I wrote a short piece attempting to identify which parts of the Bill of Rights had never been violated by the government and the only amendment I could come up with was the 3rd (at least to the best of my knowledge). I tried to provide examples of violations of the clear meaning of the rest. As time passes less and less of the Constitution is being adhered to by Congress with the shameful abdication of its position to safeguard it by an increasingly politicized Supreme Court. That McCain-Feingold and Kelo v. New London could both pass the courts constitutional muster in the last few years indicates how far the document has been nullified.