The 9th: The Amendment Retards Can't Read

One particular comment stood out in a poorly-reasoned commentary I encountered today about a la carte cable TV:

Never mind that it's simply absurd for the government to be puttering around in America's television sets, as if there's some enumerated right to a certain type of TV. [emphasis mine]

I care a little about a la carte cable TV, but this notion of "enumerated rights" kicks my bee-hive.

The notion that "you don't have a right to X in the Constitution," the retarded talking point most commonly invoked to deny the existence of individual rights that "conservatives" don't like, is expressly contradicted in the text of ... wait for it ... the US Constitution:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

These words, and their plain meaning, constitute the 9th Amendment.

This misconception would hardly merit a chuckle if it were limited to retarded commentators writing cable industry puff-pieces for ZDNet, but it goes a lot deeper than that. It is associated with the tendentiously misnamed "originalism," a school of right-wing revisionist Constitutional adjudication best known for its association with wingnut Robert Bork.

Ed Brayton has recently posted on this and related topics touching an ongoing debate between Roger Pilon and Matthew Franck. It's interesting stuff if you're in the mood to geek out on the Constitution, although the discussion includes a maddening conflation of originalism and textualism.