Mike Lee: Federal Child Labor Laws Are Unconstitutional (VIDEO)

Sen. Mike Lee: Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional
ThinkProgress reports: Last week, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) posted a lecture on his YouTube channel where he explains in great detail his views on the Constitution. As part of the lecture, which is essentially a lengthy defense of his radical tenther interpretation of the Constitution, Lee claims thatfederal Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional: Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [child labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Suprem...

Sen. Mike Lee Calls Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional
Last week, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) posted a lecture on his YouTube channel where he explains in great detail his views on the Constitution. As part of the lecture, which is essentially a lengthy defense of his radical tenther interpretation of the Constitution, Lee claims that federal Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional: Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [child labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Supreme Court decided a case...

Blah Blah, Sen. Mike Lee Wants Child Labor Legal Again, Blah Blah
What a boring Friday! Why is that Loughner kid not doing anything crazy? There are so many reporters there in Tucson, ready for him to lick a bailiff. What are we supposed to talk about, each vote in that RNC election? Meh. Or that the new Utah senator says the ban on Child Labor is Unconstitutional? Fine. Yes, Mike Lee put this video up on YouTube last week. He was giving a lecture, just like a real Professor of not understanding the Constitution. Even Antonin Scalia doesn’t agree with t...

Sen. Mike Lee: Put those kiddies back to work!
No, the Tea Party is not an Extremist, reactionary force in American politics that finds our government illegitimate. They're just a bunch of folks who want to take America back to the common sense government of 1850. Before there were federal Child Labor laws. Utah's freshman Senator, Mike Lee: Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [child labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer...

At least he's honest
At Least He's Honest by digby I give Tea Party Senator Mike Lee a lot of credit. He says what the rest of them won't say (or don't understand) Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [Child Labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer v. Dagenhardt. In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting — that, as reprehensible as child labor is, and as much as it ough...

Senator Claims U.S. Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional
Children working in factories, picking crops and hauling lumber on construction sites is a vision Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, apparently wants to make a reality again in the United States. In a lecture on his YouTube channel, Lee explains in great detail why he believes U.S.  Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional. In Lee’s view, the Federal Government doesn’t have authority to enact federal Minimum Wage laws, Civil Rights laws or to provide Medicare and Soci

It was inevitable: New tea-partying Republican senator thinks child labor should be legal
Yes, we used to joke (or half-joke, anyway) that hey, next thing you know, Republicans are going to start demanding a return legalized Child Labor. It's not a joke anymore. As Ian Millhiser reports at Think Progress, Utah's newly elected Republican Senator, Mike Lee -- the Tea Partier who unseated Robert Bennett -- posted a video of a lecture he gave last week on the Constitution. It was quite a lecture: Not only does Lee reveal himself to be a far-right "Tenther" -- a conspiracist approach to t...

GOP Senator: Lets Reinstate Particularly Discredited Supreme Court Decisions!
I remember when I used to joke about Republicans bringing back Hammer v.Dagenhart.   Senator Mike Lee provides the punchline himself. It’s worth mentioning here that, Lee’s claims that Hammer was a regrettable outcome compelled by the Constitution notwithstanding, the majority’s reasoning was in fact remarkably specious.    The law struck down in Hammer wasn’t even a general ban; it merely prevented good made with Child Labor fro

Getting to the heart of partisan differences
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARTISAN DIFFERENCES.... Sen. Mike Lee (R) of Utah, just a week on the job, was overshadowed a bit during the midterm season. His ideology was every bit as extreme as some of the year's more notable Candidates -- Angle, O'Donnell, Buck, Miller, et al -- but he never quite garnered the same kind of attention. Part of this is because his victory was a foregone conclusion after Lee won the GOP nomination, but part of it has to do with his skills. The freshman senator is a ...

Endgame
Do it well: — Gen Y likes walkable urbanism, but as I never tire of pointing out it’s generally illegal to build it. — Senator Mike Lee thinks Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional. — “Structural” Unemployment is only a small share of the total. — Monetary Morality. — Is China already number one? (I think there are some conceptual problems with using PPP to compare aggregate output). M.I.A., “Bad Girls”. ...

The Insurance Industry and the Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate
This last week Kansas's Attorney General asked to join the Florida challenge to the Individual Mandate, making Kansas the 26th state whose attorney generals have have opposed the individual mandate in the affordable care act. (Over at Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin finds this groundswell of state opposition to the constitutionality of the act remarkable and even unprecedented. It's worth noting, however, that attorney generals representing 37 states supported the Violence Against Women Act in 200...

Mike Lee and the Need for Filibuster Reform
A lot of attention has been paid to incoming Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and his wacky views, but Senator Mike Lee of Utah is arguably just as insane. Consider this lecture he gave in Draper, Utah : Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [Child Labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer v. Dagenhardt. In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting — that, as rep..

Argument recap: Choosing the rule for warrantless searches when police create exigent circumstances
On Wednesday, the Court heard oral argument in Kentucky v. King. During oral argument in Kentucky v. King on Wednesday, the Court struggled to find the proper test for determining when police are prohibited from justifying a warrantless search with exigent circumstances that they create.  Because neither side supported the Kentucky Supreme Court’s two-prong test, a straightforward affirmance seems very unlikely; instead, the Court focused on whether the state’s proposed “l...

New Hampshire to Consider Parental Notification on Abortion
The New Hampshire legislature will once again consider Legislation to allow parents to know when their minor daughters are considering an Abortion — a topic that has reached the Supreme Court. Republicans, who enjoy a majority control of the state House, announced their legislative agenda yesterday and it included Legislation helping parents not be in the dark when their daughters are contemplating an abortion. Without such a law in place, parents would have to pick up the pieces after the...

OReilly: Bachmann, Palin snubbing media after Arizona shootings
More than seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a state law criminalizing “Homosexual conduct,” the Unconstitutional provision remains on the books. “The law is unconstitutional. It needs to be deleted from the statute,” said Chuck Smith, deputy Executive Director of LGBT Advocacy Group Equality Texas. There wasn’t a great deal of fanfare last week when U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley released a three-year-long committee staff review of the financial activit...

Shelby Proposes $1 Trillion In Budget Cuts Across The Board
Last October, during the height of his campaign for U.S. Senate in Utah, Sen. Mike Lee (then a Republican Candidate) called for a 40 percent cut in federal spending in order to balance the Budget. After his opponent pointed out that the idea is “ridiculously irresponsible” and would cause “utter chaos,” the campaign backed away from Lee’s demand, and he appears not to have made it since. Last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) similarly proposed outlandish Budget...

Leftovers - January 14, 2011
Classy: Maine's Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage tells the NAACP to "kiss my butt." Sen. Mike Lee says Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional. The Washington Times claims "blood Libel" outrage is evidence of a "Pogrom" against the right. The argument against mixed-party seating at the State of the Union. Tim Heffernan rounds up all of Sarah Palin's 'sorries' in the past year. ...

Clues About the Supreme Court and the ACA?
I have some thoughts about what the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant cert in a commerce clause case (with an angry dissent from Thomas) might mean for the constitutionality of the Individual Mandate. The short version: probably not much. It does make it an odds-on favorite that Scalia will vote to hold the mandate Unconstitutional, but given that the case involves the Regulation of Health Care rather than pot this isn’t shocking. Otherwise, we don’t know a lot more than we did ...

Vt. won't appeal religious vanity plate decision
A Vermont man will be able to get a license plate that refers to a famous passage from The Bible's New Testament. The state decided earlier this week to settle a Lawsuit filed by Shawn Byrne of West Rutland. The Department of Motor Vehicles rejected his vanity plate request because it violated a policy prohibiting religious slogans on plates. The settlement means Byrne can order a license plate that reads "JN36TN," a reference to the often-quoted Bible verse John 3:16. In October, the 2nd U.S. C...

Clearing the Browser Tabs Symphonic Saturday Edition
And now, links! This is what a kleptocracy looks like. If we’re not diligent in our duties as citizens, there are likely to be a lot more of these in the very near future. You probably won’t be surprised to know that the lone Socialist in Congress is really not happy at the prospect of losing a little chunk of American socialism. Stacy McCain found a great quote on the relationship between the Tea Parties and the academic elite. Ronald Reagan, Jr. is a sad little man who is throwing ...

US debt passes $14 trillion, Congress weighs caps
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States just passed a dubious milestone: Government Debt surged to an all-time high, more than $14 Trillion. That means Congress soon will have to lift the legal Debt Limit to give the nearly maxed-out government an even higher credit limit or dramatically cut spending to stay within the current cap. Either way, a fight is ahead on Capitol Hill, inflamed by the passions of Tea Party Activists and Deficit hawks. Today’s Debt level represents a $45,300 tab f...

Russell Simmons accuses US of killing 200,000 Iraqis; blames Tea Party for hate
 Russell Simmons accuses US of killing 200,000 Iraqis; blames Tea Party for more hatred. The founder of hip-hop label Def Jam and entrepreneur appeared in a TV interview late yesterday to plug his latest book called “Super Rich,” appropriately named. Simmons is worth an approximate $340 million, and you would think that because of his ability to demonstrate that black people like him can make it in America, he would be more grateful to and respectful of his country. However, aft...

The Many Storied Story of "The Narrative" and What the Loss of It Costs Us
Do I even need to mention "the narrative" in relation to the media's competing narratives about what narratives might have contributed to the ongoing narrative mindset of violent Extremists, such as Jared Lee Loughner, who has remained silent on the subject? Or how the Internet creates and distributes narratives, or how blogs--such as this one--go on and on about narratives, or how novels, poems, plays, and performances all contribute their own narratives about the world, to the world? In addi...

The lesson of Tucson - GUN CONTROL NOW!
One of the fiercest gun-control advocates in Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson Sunday, promising to introduce Legislation. McCarthy ran for Congress after her husband was gunned down and her son seriously injured in a shooting in 1993 on a Long Island commuter train. Join the movement & tell us what you will do to keep guns out of the hands of the high risk groups mentioned in the video. (Teabaggers, ect.) A Shovel Ready Comrade also speaks ...

John Dingell (D-MI) blames Palin, GOP for rhetoric leading to AZ shooting. Flashback: Dingell links tea party to KKK, called rad
Curiously, Dingell said:"I saw the district of Gabrielle Giffords has a crosshairs put on it. As a lifetime rifleman and shooter, I know what crosshairs signify when you put them on somebody and I know what happened.Is he talking about Palin or Daily Kos? The liberal Daily Kos put a bullseye on Giffords in 2008 (via HillBuzz): More from Henry Payne at The Michigan View: Dingell just accused Palin as an accessory to Murder? Yawn.Dingell had previewed his comments Monday when he toured the Detroit...