Well, only on As Maine Goes do you get a running argument over two specific assertions:

1) Do Americans have a constitutional right to vote? And,

2) do Americans have the constitutional right to own a dog?

And the MAJORITY opinion is that the answers are, respectively, No (right to vote), and Yes (right to canine companionship).

Mike Travers makes the main point here, in response to “CV43,” but Melvin Udall really takes it home in the successive comments.

I happen to own two dogs, and CV is telling me I don’t have a right to do so? What about owning a cat? Or a table lamp, or an easy chair? Do I have a right to own them?

Do I have a right to have a child?

Do I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? To own private property?

As this discussion moves on, I begin to see how clearly people exist on two different planes of understanding of what our system of government is based on.

Uh, yeah. One person has a “plane of understanding” where they see the nearly half a dozen places the Constitution speaks on the right to have a Republican form of government and to, specifically, VOTE, while the other person likes to imagine that the Founders fought and died so today’s Americans could sit at home, not allowed to vote, but be content anyways because they get to hang out with Fido the cocker spaniel.

I don’t know who CV43 is but he argues pretty rationally, which is a bad sign for his longevity on AMG.

Later on, Melvin writes a whole lot of bupkis I have trouble understanding. He says he will “stipulate” the right to vote, which one could charitably interpret as “I’m sorry I was so dumb as to not see the words written in the Constitution over and over and over,” but frankly I doubt he is even giving that much. I think it is more along the lines of, “Well, for the sake of argument I was accept, temporarily, your absurd argument that we Americans have some sort of voting rights.”

Oh, and Melvin continues to insist there is a constitutional right to own a dog, which apparently comes from the a supposed literal right to have property (not actually in the constitution….) or a VERY broad reading of the “right to happiness.” Personally, I’d be happier if some poor canine didn’t have to listen to Melvin’s 8th grade, C- student civic lessons.