Chapter 2

The Articles of Confederation was the very first set of laws the people had from 1781 - 1788. They weren't really laws but more like "powers" granted and extremely limited. These set of powers also made governing difficult and lacked any taxing authority. These Articles had many deficiencies that led to predictable problems.
In 1787 The Constitutional Convention met to revise The Articles and ended up proposing an entirely new constitution all together. The Constitution would take among the states that approved it when ratified by nine of the thirteen states. The Articles had required unanimity of state delegations for amendment, but the Constitutional Convention sought out approval from a higher authority, the people of The United States. Thus, the Constitution gave rights to the people to institute new government in the name of "We the People of The United States."

The Bill of Rights are the first ten Amendments of The Constitution and the provide basic political rights to every person in The United States of America. The Rights gave the people rights that Congress could not take away, such as freedom of speech or religion.

My response to the reading in Gateways to Democracy is simply this, there must of been some sort of conflicting thoughts in Congress towards Capital Punishment otherwise they would have never put a halt on it for review. I personally feel that Capital Punishment is a violation to The Constitution and should not be allowed. Being from a Christian background myself, I believe in forgiveness and that Jesus says to forgive those who do wrong to you and/or others. I do not feel that people who commit serious crimes such as rape, murder and child pornography should be let free to re-commit they should serve the rest of their life in prison and made think about the crime they committed.
The thing about Capital Punishment is that not everyone has the same set of rules, at least that is the way it appears to me, because they're people who have been executed under the Capital Punishment law(s) and they're people that still remain in prison for committing the same identical crime. Thus, to me Capital Punishment is cruel and unfair punishment simply stating this: To put one to death for a crime is inhuman no matter how that person has reacted and then letting another person who has been convicted of the same sort of crime remain locked away in prison for life is just unfair and a violation of Human Rights, period.