Americans on Facts and Opinions

[brewer]

Makes we wonder who PEW found to create their observed failure rate.

Or are we all just funkin genius?

[Silver]

4/5 on both factual and opinion.

[Little lunch]

10/10
I did just wake up and I went back half way through and changed two answers.
Maybe a lot of other people would be the same.
You don't really know the answers as fact and then you realise you're just observing the differences between fact and opinion.
They may have been preoccupied when asked the questions.

[CapnAwesome]

I doubt Europeans are better. I just spent 3 months there and they were super ill-informed or misinformed about America, in general.

At least we tend to inform ourselves about our own fucking country.

Also, I'd put up the average European (hell I'd put up the average Malawian) and they'll know a lot more about the US than the average US citizen.

Yeah, but most of the stuff they'll 'know' will be totally wrong. I heard so much crazy shit that people thought about America when I was in Europe that was just totally incorrect.

[Rev. Rye]

5/5 both times.

Although I was unsure about the illegal immigrants having rights under the Constitution. Not because I don’t think they do or should, but because I’m not sure it’s the Constitution that guarantees rights for illegal immigrants. It’s been a while since I read the whole thing, but I don’t remember it going into much detail about immigration, let alone legal status (a relatively recent concern), and when that happens and an issue arises, it goes to the Supreme Court, and, like it or not, they rely as much on their own biases (positive or negative) as the Constitution. If they want to deprive them of rights, they can find a basis, if they want to empower them, they can find a basis. Plessy vs. Ferguson, Brown vs. the Board, it all relies as much on the judges themselves as the Constitution.

https://www.salon.com/2017/02/25/beware-...isastrous/

Still, this is what we get when we elect a president with no regard whatsoever for the facts. And if this keeps going, as we get older, it’ll get worse.

[Angrboda]

ISTR, it's the fourteenth amendment which forced the matter. Nope. My bad. Wrong case.

[chimp3]

I scored 5/5. Some of you may consider that fake news!

[Rev. Rye]

ISTR, it's the fourteenth amendment which forced the matter. Nope. My bad. Wrong case.

The 14th Amendment explicitly applies to "All persons born or naturalized in the United States." If they're considered here illegally, they haven't been naturalized. I'm sure we do have protections to immigrants (legal and illegal), but I don't think they're explicitly in the Constitution. At best, they're a result of Supreme Court decisions, which, as I mentioned earlier, are as much down to the pre-existing biases and prejudices (for good or for bad) of the judges themselves as they are to the Constitution. Like it or not, the Supreme Court's interpretations of the Constitution hinge on exactly that: interpretations.

This is why a judge from Detroit in the 19th century who probably didn't have much experience about the realities of racial segregation can say it's not necessary unconstitutional, and a judge in the 20th who has seen the results of racial injustice firsthand (and perpetrated it, until he actually looked into what he was doing and grew a conscience) can look at the same system of segregation and say "No, segregation is inherently unconstitutional."

They had the same document (and the seven amendments passed in the 60 year interim weren't relevant to the case at hand, hell, one explicitly undid another), and they reached two very different conclusions.

[Angrboda]

ISTR, it's the fourteenth amendment which forced the matter.  Nope.  My bad.  Wrong case.

The 14th Amendment explicitly applies to "All persons born or naturalized in the United States." If they're considered here illegally, they haven't been naturalized. I'm sure we do have protections to immigrants (legal and illegal), but I don't think they're explicitly in the Constitution. At best, they're a result of Supreme Court decisions, which, as I mentioned earlier, are as much down to the pre-existing biases and prejudices (for good or for bad) of the judges themselves as they are to the Constitution. Like it or not, the Supreme Court's interpretations of the Constitution hinge on exactly that: interpretations.

After doing some reading, it appears that some support comes from the Equal Protection clause of the fourteenth.

Persons "within its jurisdiction" are entitled to equal protection from a state. Largely because the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV has from the beginning guaranteed the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states, the Supreme Court has rarely construed the phrase "within its jurisdiction" in relation to natural persons. In Plyler v. Doe (1982), where the Court held that aliens illegally present in a state are within its jurisdiction and may thus raise equal protection claims the Court explicated the meaning of the phrase "within its jurisdiction" as follows: "[U]se of the phrase "within its jurisdiction" confirms the understanding that the Fourteenth Amendment's protection extends to anyone, citizen or stranger, who is subject to the laws of a State, and reaches into every corner of a State's territory." The Court reached this understanding among other things from Senator Howard, a member of the Joint Committee of Fifteen, and the floor manager of the amendment in the Senate. Senator Howard was explicit about the broad objectives of the Fourteenth Amendment and the intention to make its provisions applicable to all who "may happen to be" within the jurisdiction of a state:

The last two clauses of the first section of the amendment disable a State from depriving not merely a citizen of the United States, but any person, whoever he may be, of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or from denying to him the equal protection of the laws of the State. This abolishes all class legislation in the States and does away with the injustice of subjecting one caste of persons to a code not applicable to another. ... It will, if adopted by the States, forever disable every one of them from passing laws trenching upon those fundamental rights and privileges which pertain to citizens of the United States, and to all person who may happen to be within their jurisdiction. [emphasis added by the U.S. Supreme Court]

The relationship between the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments was addressed by Justice Field in Wong Wing v. United States (1896). He observed with respect to the phrase "within its jurisdiction": "The term 'person,' used in the Fifth Amendment, is broad enough to include any and every human being within the jurisdiction of the republic. A resident, alien born, is entitled to the same protection under the laws that a citizen is entitled to. He owes obedience to the laws of the country in which he is domiciled, and, as a consequence, he is entitled to the equal protection of those laws. ... The contention that persons within the territorial jurisdiction of this republic might be beyond the protection of the law was heard with pain on the argument at the bar—in face of the great constitutional amendment which declares that no State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Wikipedia || Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

[Rev. Rye]

Good point, but that still points to the protections afforded to illegal immigrants coming not so much from the Constitution itself as the judges who have to interpret it. At best, it's an inference from the 14th Amendment that was not explicitly spelled out in the document itself.

That particular section is ambiguously worded is all I'm saying.