“I spent three years getting my law degree at Yale Law School. From the moment I enrolled, I was assigned huge, leather-bound editions of legal cases to study and discuss. I read what lawyers and judges, professors and historians said about the Constitution. But never once was I assigned the task of reading the Constitution itself...Over the last decade, however, I have become a student of the Constitution, searching each line for its meaning and intent. Studying the Constitution is like studying the Bible. It is amazing how much more you will learn when you quit studying about it and pick it up to read it for yourself.”

Another extremely sad scenario, during my college experience I was never required to read the Constitution. I made the mistake of reading it and then researching where it came from. It is a document now relegated to a land far far away in a time long forgotten.

Not a mistake Mike. In the long run it's something everyone must do to correct things.

Sounds like the education system in general. Topical but never substantial.

Right on.. get out your constitutions!

Police get their constitutional law courses completed at the firing range. If you wish to see how completely authorities will dismiss, trash, abandon the Constitutional, State and even local law, consider these clips from Hurricane Katrina, where armed citizens peaceably protecting themselves and their property were violently subdued and disarmed BY THE AUTHORITIES: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-taU9d26wT4 . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm5PC7z79-8 In Milwaukee, WI, the Nazi police chief decided he didn't care what constitutional and state law said on carrying guns, he would draw guns on and subdue anyone doing so. Here's the story of how he did so on a man on his own property, planting a tree with a visible, holstered sidearm: http://www.jpfo.org/alerts02/alert20081212b.htm . And here is what this top SS-cop in Milwaukee had to say about it: http://www.jpfo.org/kirby/kirby-wi-top-crim.htm . WE ARE IN DEEP TROUBLE, FOLKS.

First place to start is to have the Supreme Court read it.

and like the Bible it must apparently need mans sermonizing about it. Why do we need preachers if we can just read the Bible for ourselves.

WOW Waffler, what have you done with Waffler. Excellent comment. You had to be inferring something more than the obvious. If everyone read the constitution, what it was based on, understood individual sovereignty, personal responsibility, etc. there would be no need for so many lawyers and judges and, the corrupt theocratic despots that infest this country would be thrown out in favor of freedom and liberty. Court cases such as Dred Scott, stating those of African descent are not human as would rise to the level of legal persons but rather chattel for ownership - having never been over turned, would be abolished as all life is sacred, noble, and sovereign as per the Laws of Nature and Nature's God. (-; a little personal reading of the Bible there - you were right, I didn't need a preacher ;-)

You missed the point Mike, why am I not surprised. The fact that we don't just read the Bible but have men and women for ages interpret, explain and preach from it is a lesson that we can also take to our understanding of the Constitution. They are both apparently living documents, foundations from which to work and grapple with our very human daily problems and experiences. They are not precepts or "natural law" set in concrete like so many mantras on Orwells Animal Farm set up by pigs for every one else to follow.

There is nothing more dead than a "living" document. It's more like an un-dead document; a zombie document. By the way, didn't God say, "I am the Lord thy God; I change not."

My father was a Harvard Law School full scholarship winner, Suma Cum Laude graduate. After many years practicing law he eventually quit because it was too political and biased against the poorer on the socioeconomic scale. He now is involved in conflict resolution and mediation. He knew nothing about the Constitution -- they study the UCC, Universal Commercial Code, even if the cases are not about commerce -- everything is commerce now, there is no Common Law jurisdiction or a court to challenge Constitutional issues that have any real significance. They learn how to act in a court room and to follow the rules or else lose their license from the American Bar Association (a private organization). The legal system has been co-opted by the ABA and the FED because we are actually in a state of receivership to the Fed, and the courts are merely overseeing the 'rules' of the bankruptcy. We are all treated as wards of the state (when you get a lawyer, that is what you are saying), and subservient to the court. But you won't learn that in a single reading of the Constitution, you have to study its history and the writings of the founders to understand its intent.