LegalEagleMan wrote:The point of all this? Simply, that Congress can, and has, exercised its power to regulate the value of the dollar, in this and other ways.
Congress has no authority to regulate the value of the
DOLLAR, see Constitution. This has already been covered multiple times. The dollar is set by the Constitution, see various Supreme Court decisions, I already posted one you probably can find plenty of other ones.
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
You are STILL as wrong as you can be.
Let's start with the entire concept of "dollar". Although the word "dollar" appears in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, there was no official coin or unit of money known as the "dollar" during our first years of existence. The references to "dollars" spoke only of Spanish Milled Dollars, the silver 8 reales coin which was produced in profusion by Spanish colonies and which was the most common coin in circulation in the early days of independence (when it was not cut up into as many as 8 bits; hence "two bits" for a quarter dollar). In fact, the term "dollar" was completely unofficial; many coins of that size and weight were called "dollars" after the famous Joachimsthalers which set the standard. Despite this, it was by no means certain that the dollar would become our official unit of currency, as the 1783 Nova Constellation patterns, in which 1000 Units equaled one Mark, prove.
The Coinage Act of 1792 was the first time where Congress exercised its authority to coin money, and regulate the value thereof (for what is a dollar if not money?). Coinage acts of 1853, 1873, and 1965, plus a few that I'm forgetting, further regulated the value of the dollar by varying the weight and composition of the U.S. coinage. Then, too, there are the various pieces of legislation regarding issuance of various forms of currency.
Your Supreme Court cases are either not on point, or else they simply contain dicta which you are inflating to equal importance with the holding in the case. Play whatever TP magic word games you want to play; but to anyone who does not start with the desired premise and then search for magic words to support that premise, Congress has the right to regulate the value of the dollar as it has, whether or not that truth is politically palatable to you.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." -- Pastor Ray Mummert, Dover, PA, during an attempt to introduce creationism -- er, "intelligent design", into the Dover Public Schools
