Amendment 8 - Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Ratified 12/15/1791

Amendment 8 - Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Ratified 12/15/1791. - Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

So I looked at this for over an hour last night. Occasionally switching back to the Constitution, and then back to this.

I did recognize one critical nuance throughout this document. There is a clear mention and uses of terms such as Citizen, or Persons, or even "The People". As I read the 8th Addendum in context of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. its overwhelming obvious that none of those terms are present.

Now, I'm not a Judge. Don't even play one on TV. But I can not see any disseminate or any difference in how a "Person", "People" or "Citizen" qualifies or disqualifies any constitutional due process

I'll go one more step and refer to the Declaration of Independence and attempt to capture not only the spirit, but the letter of that declaration.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," Now I realize that we have had issue with these terms in the past. When these words were written down, they did not intend to be all inclusive. This did not include servants or labourers (aka: slaves) . We know this because those issues were resolved through constitutional amendments:13th & 24th Amendments. And we know that the framers did not intent to include women. We resolved that in in 1920 with the 19th amendment.

But we must assume that the term "All Men" applied to all men, and by todays standards we can argue that they must be at least of an age of 18 years. And we can assume that the national orientations could not have played a roll in the definition, or it would have excluded all the founding fathers. Many of them or their parents, or other family and friends were either a citizen of other countries or only one or two generations removed.

More current than this is the direction the President offered in his election bid and continues to support in his administration: We Do NOT Torture. Do the republicans get it? It doesn't matter if the suspect is is detained under any rule of law, we will not interrogate prisoners using any "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"

Ok, back to camera three,.. Damn! not a TV Studio, just a Blog