 The Ninth Amendment amounts to the phrase: "insert political philosophy here." In referring to other rights not enumerated in the Constitution, it invites judges to refer to basic principles of political philosophy to define what those rights might be. And I don't think the Founders ever imagined the controversy that would follow from this, since they all accepted the natural rights philosophy of Locke as proven and universal.
Robert Tracinski
The Intellectual Activist Daily
I am in favor of federally funded stem-cell research for the same reason that I
am in favor of teaching evolution in public schools. Ideally, the US government
would fund neither medical research nor education--but given that it does so,
its actions must be ruled by reason, not by an effort to promote or enforce the
superstitious restrictions of any particular strain of religious mysticism.... As a symbolic issue, to spend billions on medical research while
exempting this one area sends the same message the president will send if he
uses his first and only veto to block this bill: that enforcing religious
restrictions is the government's highest priority.
Robert Tracinski
TIADaily
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