Um.... no.
If you possessed critical thinkning skills, you wouldnt simply conclude that the people you mention were right, you'd assume that they were wrong and then look into their argument. You have obviously not done that.
Sure I have. I took a class, and some very well-educated, knowledgable people who study the Constitution told me "The US Air Force is Constitutional". Furthermore, they told me why. In addition, every Constitutional lawyer, professor, and justice would say the exact same thing.
This differs remarkable from your position. You claim the US Air Force is unconstitutional, and cannot give a satisfactory answer as to why. In addition, you can find no individual knowledgable to back up your position - hence why you have provided no reputable links, as I have done.
It's a simple matter of you forgetting to ask your Constitutional law professor this question, and him answering it for you. You obviously forgot to do that, which is why I suggested emailing him. The fact that you vehemently balk at this suggestion tells me all I need to know. You're wrong, and furthermore, you realize you are wrong. Either that or you never took a Constitutional law class, which at this point seems a very likely speculation.
This is an amazinly silly argument.
Simply agreeing with someone doesnt make you right -- you being able to show that you're right makes you right.
That, you fave so far failed to do.
Again, i've provided a link for you which proves I am right. In case there is any doubt, my position is the exact same as the law professor's. In fact, it's the exact same as every law professor and justice who has dealt with the issue.
In any case, they are much more knowledgable on this issue than yourself (obviously), so you'll excuse me if I take their word over yours. And according to the poll, so does everyone else.
Then your argument was unsound both before and after my correction.
You mean my correction; after all, you were the one struggling with the terms "foregoing" and "forementioned". You're welcome for the correction, btw.
This has been addressed -- the canon against surplusage renders this argument unsound.
And subsequently proven wrong not only by myself, but by the link I provided.
Yes, yes it does -- because the navy and the Army are not the same thing.
The Army and the Airforce are not the same thing...
Yup, and because of the Elastic Clause, the Air Force is Constitutional.
Q1: What clause, if any, of the Constitution permits Congress to establish an air force?
A: Article I, § 8, provides that Congress may "raise and support Armies," and "provide and maintain a Navy," and make "Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." The Air Force is "comprehended in the constitutional term 'armies.'" Laird v. Tatum 408 U.S. 1 (1972) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
The question illustrates the dangers of adopting an overly literal "strict construction" or "clause-bound interpretivist" approach to the Constitution as opposed to, say, a more expansive Marshellian approach ("it is a Constitution we are expounding here"). If we were to read the "Armies" and "a Navy", and the "land and naval" forces language literally, it would be tempting to read it as excluding an Air Force. It also shows the power (and perhaps virtue) of a structural or holistic approach to constitutional interpretation. "Land and naval forces" was, after all, all the armed forces known at the time of the Framing. Why not read that text to mean "armed forces"? Surely, after all, that is what was intended. (There is a third, wimpish, approach to this issue, which is to note that the Air Force was initially part of the Army, and thus to argue that it is just another Army, one that happens to fly.)
“A Constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That this idea was entertained by the framers of the American Constitution is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from the language. Why else were some of the limitations found in the 9th section of the 1st article introduced? It is also in some degree warranted by their having omitted to use any restrictive term which might prevent its receiving a fair and just interpretation. In considering this question, then, we must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding.”
--Marshall, CJ, in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 407 (1819).
As far as I can tell, no judge has ever seriously suggested that the Air Force is unconstitutional. Indeed, Justice Douglas's dictum (in dissent) may be the only discussion of this issue by a federal appellate court in the law reports.
On the one hand, this may reinforce our faith in the fundamental sanity of legal discourse. On the other hand, this absence might be traced to modern standing doctrine (the doctrine that unless at least one plaintiff has a unique and personal interest in the outcome of the case, courts should not hear it at all), which creates few opportunities for the issue to arise. Few, but not none at all, as demonstrated by the creative lawyering before the U.S. Air Force Board of Review in U.S. v. Naar, 951 WL 2298 (AFBR), 2 C.M.R. 739 (1952). There, appellant, an Air Force officer, argued unsuccessfully that he had been prosecuted unlawfully because the Fifth Amendment states that "no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces" and the Air Force was neither. The tribunal made short work of that argument. (Source: Discourse.net: Law: Constitutional Law: Reading the Constitution Archives )