Thinking persons can take the position that stare decisis requires that we not change 60 years of Commerce Clause jurisprudence (Thomas\’ position, perhaps). Other thinking persons may say \”we took this power because we wanted it, and we\’re not giving it back without a fight\” (Souter). Other might think \”we have the right to ignore the 10th Amendment because times have changed (O\’Connor and Kennedy).

However, let\’s not delude ourselves into thinking that the current state of affairs is anything the Founding Fathers would approve of.

Regarding your questions:

Telecommunications and the first amendment:

The Founding Fathers would likely find that providing telecommunication services was interstate commerce which could be regulated by Congress.

However, they would likely feel that the content of the telecommunications were protected by the First Amendment, or a general liberty right under the 14th.

Commercial airlines:

The Founding Fathers would likely find that transportation of passengers across state lines by air was interstate commerce which could be regulated by Congress.

Islamic terrorism and the fourth amendment:

The Founding Fathers would likely find that defense against Islamic terrorism was a matter of national defense, that enemy combatants, like Southerners during Reconstruction, and many Loyalists during the Revolution, could be tried by military tribunal, but that the writ of habeas corpus could not be suspended.

And Daniel, the great part about a centralized blog for this news is that we could save storage space on the server with no loss of information by just replacing the “Post” button with /dev/null.

Telecommunications are “press”. Congress shall make no law. Information is not “commerce”. As for allocating broadcast bandwidth, that would require an amendment and I might support a carefully worded one, as I do in my Draft Amendments at http://constitution.org/reform/us/con_amend.htm

It also makes sense for the federal government to regulate aviation, but, again, it would require an amendment unless all the states ceded jurisdiction to their airspaces making airspace, say, 1000 ft. above terrain, to be a federal enclave under Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 17.

Terrorists are pirates, that is, foreign nonstate actors who commit warlike acts. The Constitution provides for them.

The Fourth Amendment confronts us with having to elaborate on what constitute private zones and their boundaries, but that was also confronted by the Founders and understood by them.

It is possible to get to know the thinking of the Founders well enough to make reasonable guesses as to what they would have thought about modern situations, but if there is any doubt, Art. V provides the remedy.

What were the founding father’s opinions on telecommunications and the first amendment? How about on on commercial airlines, Islamist terrorism, and the fourth amendment? How did the founders understand those situations?

Or should we just make-up analogies on how “WE THINK” the founders would have thought? That sounds a lot like we’re inserting our own opinions into Constitutional interpretation. A little too judicial activist for your tast Mr. Roland, no?