The judge's reasoning was explicitly based on many of the Founders being members of the first Congress, so you have granted that the argument is completely bogus.
And the point of the comment you're responding to is that the quoted argument is a non sequitur, which it surely is. The fact that the fifth Congress voted for a bad, self-serving law that violated the principles of the Constitution is completely irrelevant to whether the first Congress, in passing the All Writs Act, was doing the same. The argument is really quite circular: the belief that it is not absurd that the first Congress willingly violated the principles of the Constitution is the premise, not a conclusion that can be drawn from something done by the fifth Congress or the 105th Congress.
Government, and even individual administrations contradict themselves all the time, not unlike the rest of us, but sadly to the detriment of the Rule of Law and the Citizens subject to those laws.
The Obama Administration began with a bailout of the American auto industry, and here seven years later, it is pouring billions of dollars into self-driving vehicles that could disrupt that same industry. I'm sure there are examples to be found in every administration (and Congress) before Obama, all the way to the First Congress.
IMHO, I'm really glad that a judge decided to rule in a way that says the Government cannot contradict itself. I wish it happened more often.
I was skeptical of the claim that the current administration is "pouring billions of dollars into self-driving vehicles," but you're correct.
At the recent "Detroit Auto Show, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced that the DOT would make a '10-year, nearly $4 billion investment to accelerate the development and adoption of safe vehicle automation through real-world pilot projects.'"
However, if you believe that self-driving cars are the inevitable future, which I and many do, then I'm not sure this is really evidence of a contradiction. Both can be seen as investments in keeping the American auto industry alive and relevant in a global economy.
That doesn't take away from your larger point that governments do seem to contradict themselves all the time, i.e., make investments and pass laws/have policies that work at cross purposes.
If Google or Apple start producing self-driving vehicles, they're part of the American auto industry. If GM then can't keep up with them, who cares? The American auto industry is still perfectly fine, just consists of different companies.
Now if the Obama Administration wouldn't invest into self-driving cars and companies from other countries would grow big in this space, there might not be much of an American auto industry left afterwards. If anything, not investing into such research would be contradictory.
Many of the founders were also in the fifth congress, and a founder signed them into law.
My argument is that the premise that the law can't be interpreted according to the governments wishes because the noble founders would have never written a law violating constitutional principles is clearly false, because they did so on more than one occasion.
The 1st US Congress had 29 senators and 66 representatives (95 distinct people), not all simultaneously, while the 5th US Congress had 45 senators and 118 representatives (162 distinct people, as Andrew Jackson served as both a representative and a senator during this period)[0].
Of the 95 members of the 1st US Congress, 21 (~22%) of them were members of the 5th US Congress, with the following breakdown:
* 5 senators (~17%) remained senators;
* 9 representatives (~14%) remained representatives; and
* 7 representatives (~11%) became senators.
Notes: John Brown was initially a representative of Virginia, then later became a senator of Kentucky (which was part of Virginia at the time of the 1st US Congress). William Smith (MD; 1st US House), William L. Smith (SC; 1st US House), and William Smith (SC; 5th US House) were all different people.
Method: moderately careful transcription plus grep, perl, sort, uniq, and comm.
EDIT: Thanks for adventured for the correction. I mistranscribed Philip Schuyler's name when copying down the members of the 5th US Congress.
[0] I didn't independently check the lists on Wikipedia[1][2].
I thought there might be some interest in knowing how people who were in both the 1st and 5th Congresses voted on the Alien and Sedition Acts. This actually consists of four distinct acts, and I chose to focus on An Act concerning Aliens (the second of the four acts).
The short answer is: Federalists voted for it, and Democratic-Republicans voted against it.
If I'm reading the House and Senate Journals correctly, the relevant legislative history is as follows:
The bill passed by a vote of 17-6 (GovTrack reports this as 16-7 for some reason). Of the 12 members of the 1st US Congress who were senators in the 5th US Congress, two (John Henry and John Vining) had resigned well before the summer of 1798, and four (James Gunn, John Langdon, Philip Schuyler, and Theodore Sedgwick) did not vote on the bill. The remainder voted on straight party lines:
* Affirmative: Theodore Foster, Benjamin Goodhue, John Laurance, Samuel Livermore. (Federalists)
* Negative: Timothy Bloodworth, John Brown. (Democratic-Republicans)
The bill passed by a vote of 46-40. Of the 9 members of the 1st US Congress who were representatives in the 5th US Congress, one (William L. Smith) had already resigned at the time the bill was considered, and two others (Thomas Hartley and Josiah Parker) did not vote. The remainder voted as follows:
* Affirmative: Abiel Foster, James Schureman, Thomas Sinnickson, George Thatcher. (Federalists)
* Negative: Abraham Baldwin, Thomas Sumter. (Democratic-Republicans)
Either there was no vote here, or the yays and nays were not requested. The Senate Journal just says that they took into consideration the amendments and resolved that they concur in the amendments.
Thanks for the details! The party line vote makes sense - the Democratic-Republicans believed the bills were targeted at them. I did not know the specific composition of the first Congress and the fifth Congress; that's good to know.
And the point of the comment you're responding to is that the quoted argument is a non sequitur, which it surely is. The fact that the fifth Congress voted for a bad, self-serving law that violated the principles of the Constitution is completely irrelevant to whether the first Congress, in passing the All Writs Act, was doing the same. The argument is really quite circular: the belief that it is not absurd that the first Congress willingly violated the principles of the Constitution is the premise, not a conclusion that can be drawn from something done by the fifth Congress or the 105th Congress.