The Real Constitution: Article I, Section IX (Prohibitions on the Congress)

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.


The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.


No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.


No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.


No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.


No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.


No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.


No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

The Real Constitution: Article I, Section VIII (Powers of the Congress)

The Congress shall have Power: To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;


To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;


To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;


To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;


To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;


To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;


To establish Post Offices and post Roads;


To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;


To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;


To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;


To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;


To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;


To provide and maintain a Navy;


To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;


To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;


To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;


To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And


To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

This section is at the heart of any debate over just how much the Federal Government really can do.

The first defect Edmund Randolph observed in the Articles of Confederation, as James Madison recounted them, was that

the confederation produced no security against foreign invasion; congress not being permitted to prevent a war nor to support it by their own authority-Of this he cited many examples; most of which tended to shew, that they could not cause infractions of treaties or of the law of nations, to be punished: that particular states might by their conduct provoke war without controul; and that neither militia nor draughts being fit for defence on such occasions, inlistments only could be successful, and these could not be executed without money.

The Real Constitution: Article I, Section VII (Passage of a Bill to a Law)

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.


Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.


Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

Baby boomers will recognize most of this from the Schoolhouse Rock "Bill" segment. (For being only 21, I'm sure dating myself, aren't I?)

The Real Constitution: Article I, Section VI (Privileges and Prohibitions)

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.


No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

The Real Constitution: Article I, Section V (Duties and Procedures of each House)

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.


Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.


Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.


Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

The Real Constitution: Article I, Section IV (Election and Assembly of Congress)

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.


The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

The Real Constitution: Article I, Section III (Structure of the Senate)

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.


Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.


No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.


The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.


The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.


The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.


Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Recall that even those members of the Convention that supported direct election of Representatives (as opposed to election by state legislatures) were comfortable with the idea of "successive filtration" for the Senate and Executive. Under Edmund Randolph's original Virginia Plan, Senators would be elected by the House of Representatives from nomination by state legislatures. Richard Spaight of North Carolina, concerned about the withdrawal of power from the states, was the first to propose that the state legislatures elect Senators directly; but since the convention was at the time thought to be likely to pass a system of assigning representatives according to state populations, and Randolph believed that the Senate should be "so small as to be exempt from the passionate proceedings to which numberous assemblies are liable", and Rufus King pointed out that under proportional representation "there must be 80 or 100 members to entitle Delaware to the choice of one of them", the motion was laid aside for the time being.

James Wilson, who had defended direct election of Representatives, believed the Senate should be independent of both the House and the state legislators and called for direct election of Senators, perhaps by uniting several different districts, which Madison opposed on the grounds that if a large and small state voted as a group, all its senators would be chosen from the large state even if someone from the small state was more qualified. Even at this early point, Roger Sherman proposed electing one member from each state legislature. Ultimately Randolph's scheme was effectively rejected, with only Massachusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina being happy with it.

The Real Constitution: Article I, Section II (Structure of the House)

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.


No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.


Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.


When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.


The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Under the Articles of Confederation, members of Congress were picked by state legislatures. When Edmund Randolph moved, as part of his original Virginia Plan, "that the members of the first branch of the National Legislature ought to be elected by the people of the several States", it touched off a firestorm among the more aristocratic members of the room. All words are Madison's: Roger Sherman: "The people...immediately should have as little to do as may be about the Government. They want information and are constantly liable to be misled." Elbridge Gerry: "The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massts. it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute." (It was in Massachusetts that Shays' Rebellion took place.)

George Mason provided the first coherent defense of the direct election of Representatives:

It was to be the grand depository of the democratic principle of the Govtt. It was, so to speak, to be our House of Commons-It ought to know & sympathise with every part of the community; and ought therefore to be taken not only from different parts of the whole republic, but also from different districts of the larger members of it, which had in several instances particularly in Virga., different interests and views arising from difference of produce, of habits &c &c. He admitted that we had been too democratic but was afraid we sd. incautiously run into the opposite extreme. We ought to attend to the rights of every class of the people.

"He had often wondered at the indifference of the superior classes of society to this dictate of humanity & policy," Madison continued, considering that in a few generations, given the economy of the day, some of their descendents would almost certainly join the lower classes, so "every selfish motive...every family attachment, ought to recommend such a system of policy as would provide no less carefully for the rights and happiness of the lowest than of the highest orders of Citizens." Mason was no poor man; he was a slaveowner born on a Virginia plantation, and arguably was far less of a self-made man than Sherman, whose "education did not extend beyond his father's library and grammar school and his early career was spent as a shoe designer" according to Wikipedia. But Sherman and Gerry were New Englanders intimately familiar with Shays' Rebellion, and the others that defended popular election of representatives were not.

Pennsylvania's James Wilson concurred that "no government could long subsist without the confidence of the people" (echoing the Declaration of Independence's "consent of the governed" clause) and "in a republican Government this confidence was peculiarly essential.

He also thought it wrong to increase the weight of the State Legislatures by making them the electors of the national Legislature. All interference between the general and local Governmts. should be obviated as much as possible. On examination it would be found that the opposition of States to federal measures had proceded much more from the officers of the States, than from the people at large.

Madison himself sided with Mason and Wilson, seeing popular election of Representatives as "essential to every plan of free Government". Some states, he noted, did not even have popular election of their upper houses; if the lower house were to be elected by state legislatures, the upper by the lower, the executive by the two together, and other offices by the executive, "the people would be lost sight of altogether; and the necessary sympathy between them and their rulers and officers, too little felt." Madison was okay with imposing "successive filtrations" as long as they didn't apply to the lower house, and felt that "the great fabric to be raised would be more stable and durable, if it should rest on the solid foundation of the people themselves, than if it should stand merely on the pillars of the Legislatures."

Gerry rebutted that the comparison with the House of Commons was fallacious and "that the State legislatures drawn immediately from the people did not always possess their confidence." He would be okay with direct election of representatives "if it were so qualified that men of honor & character might not be unwilling to be joined in the appointments." Madison thought Gerry supported a system where the people would only nominate some candidates for the legislatures to elect - a primary without a general election. When the general motion came to a vote, only New Jersey and South Carolina outright dissented.


In considering the "small state-big state" debate that broke out regarding representation in the new Congress, understand that before the Convention, the United States was much more like the European Union than it is today. To understand the change being considered, imagine if the UN voted by majority vote instead of consensus, and decided tomorrow that instead of giving each nation one vote, each nation would have a number of votes proportional to their population. A state like, say, New York really was a state, in the traditional sense as the government of a nation, rather than what it's become today, what most countries would call a "province". There might never be a conflict explicitly between the interests of "large states" as a group and "small states" as a group, but the individual small states certainly didn't want to see their power reduced more than their larger brethren, as one might reasonably expect them to.

Randolph proposed replacing the "one state one vote" principle of the Articles of Confederation with a system of proportional voting power to either the free population or the "Quotas of contribution" (tax revenue). Madison wanted to reject the "number of free inhabitants" approach out of hand, not because it was a bad idea per se, but because it "might occasion debates which would divert the Committee from the general question whether the principle of representation should be changed". Rufus King pointed out that the government might collect taxes in such a way that determining which state contributed how much might be impossible, Madison agreed, and the question was postponed on that first day of debating Randolph's scheme. The room wasn't yet ready to open the slavery debate.

Since one approach wasn't going to work and the other was going to touch off a firestorm in the specifics, Madison moved "that the equality of suffrage established by the articles of Confederation ought not to prevail in the national Legislature, and that an equitable ratio of representation ought to be substituted." Madison observed that, being "generally relished, [the motion] would have been agreed to" before Delaware, whose deputies had been forbidden from changing the equality of representation between the states in Congress, threatened to leave the Convention.

Madison pointed out "that whatever reason might have existed for the equality of suffrage when the Union was a federal one among sovereign States, it must cease when a national Govermt. should be put into the place." The state legislatures were most important under the Confederation; it made sense that they be treated as equals. With a new, supreme, national government in the works, it made more sense for the population of the entire nation to be represented more or less equitably. Still, the matter remained postponed after that first day, and Madison believed the room was confident that "the proposed change of representation would certainly be agreed to, no objection or difficulty being started from any other quarter than from Delaware."

The Real Constitution: Article I, Section I (Creation of Congress)

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

The very first order of business of the Constitutional Convention, after procedural matters such as electing George Washington its president and passing rules to govern the proceedings, was a speech by Edmund Randolph in which he proposed what came to be known as the Virginia Plan.

The Articles of Confederation had allocated one vote to each state in a single house of Congress. The Virginia Plan created a two-house legislature, the lower house to be elected by the people and the upper house to be elected by the lower house from a pool of people nominated by state legislatures. The two-house Congress would have power to "legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incompetent, or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual Legislation", veto laws passed by individual states they deemed to contradict the Constitution (referred to as the "articles of Union"), and use force against any state they deemed to be "failing to fulfill its duty under the [Constitution]". An executive would be chosen by the legislature, who - besides normal executive duties - would, along with "a convenient number" of the "National Judiciary... compose a Council of revision" that would review every national law and every vetoed state law, with their own veto power that could be overridden. So powerful was this plan that the following day, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina asked whether Randolph wanted to completely abolish the state governments.

The two-branch structure of Congress would be agreed to without a peep except from Pennsylvania, which Madison attributed to Benjamin Franklin "who was understood to be partial to a single House of Legislation."

Bracket Watch: A new approach to bracketology

One of the most common arguments against a playoff in college football is that it would turn college football into college basketball, where - allegedly - the regular season is completely meaningless.

This is complete bullshit. If you're going to use the "meaningless regular season" line, college basketball is not the place to use it. (That would be the NBA and NHL, which push more than half their teams into the postseason.)

There are about 347 teams in Division I college basketball. Only 65 get to play in the NCAA Tournament, or 18.7%. By contrast, major league baseball puts 26 2/3% of its teams in its postseason - even counting the NIT, college basketball is nearly as selective, putting 27.95% of its teams in the postseason. But college basketball's regular season is far more meaningful than baseball's because its teams only play 30 or so games. We can get a rough estimate of how meaningful the regular season is by taking the reciprocal of the selectiveness percentage and dividing it by the number of games. By that measure, college basketball's regular season is more meaningful than that of the NFL.

(Incidentially, college football, if it adopted a 11/5 playoff, would still only put 13 1/3% of its teams in the playoffs and have a far more meaningful regular season than any other major sport. Right now, its meaningfullness index number is 5, which means it's too meaningful because its number is over 1.)

So why does this perception of the meaningless college basketball regular season persist? Undoubtedly, a lot of it has to do with the subjectivity of the process, and its cousin, the unbalanced schedules played by college basketball conferences. In the pros, you know exactly the impact a given game will have on a given team's chances to make the playoffs. You can't know that for certain in college basketball. What's at stake for North Carolina entering today's game? Are they already locked into a #1 seed? Are they in trouble of sinking to a #2 or #3? Are they going to get an ideally situated region, or can they? We don't know.

The fast-growing field of "bracketology" (a neologism invented out of whole cloth by ESPN) could help answer these questions and help us know exactly what to expect out of a given game. Unfortunately, most bracketologists post little more than their reckoning of where the field stands right now, not how close all the teams are to each other. So we know that North Carolina is (for example, since I'm writing this during last year's March Madness!) the second #1 seed. Could they rise up to the overall #1? Could they fall? How far could they fall, and how soon? We don't know. The closest most bracketologists come, if you're lucky, is a "bubble watch" feature tracking only whether teams are in or out of the field, not how high they are if they're in. Often, even that only contains vague descriptions. Say what you will about Joe Lunardi and his tendency to get way more play than his accuracy would indicate, but if you're willing to pay for ESPN Insider, he'll give you percentage chances for every possibility you could care about. That's way more than most bracketologists.

If. You're willing to pay for ESPN Insider. (And the subscription to ESPN the Magazine Insider requires.)

Over the next two months, leading up to Selection Sunday, I'm thinking I'm going to run my own bracketology project, showing the information college basketball fans really want to know: what's at stake. I'll tell you exactly who has a shot at the overall #1 seed, the range of seeds a team could get, whether a team's in or could still be out or if they're on the bubble or if they're out but could still be in, using color-coded bars and all the information you could ever need.

I'm going to make an effort to use the same information the selection committee uses, but the NCAA seems to be more tight-lipped about what info the selection committee uses than I recall them being in the past. (Is the committee really using game scores now?) So I'm going to use the same information I use for my Golden Bowl selection process: record, RPI, strength of schedule, out-of-conference record, road/neutral record, record in the last 12 games, record against other teams in consideration, quality of wins and losses. (I'm okay with using injury info and the like.) However, this is not an effort to attempt to predict what the selection committee will do, because the purpose is to demonstrate the format. Rather, this is a record of what I would do if I were on (or rather, were) the selection committee.

I'm spending today going through each team's resume and forming an initial ranking. I hope to have a first, rough sketch of where I see the field by the end of the day. And we'll see where we go from there.