Originally published September 1, 2012 As soon as there was a Constitution, fights about its meaning began. In 1792 Fisher Ames, representing the first district of Massachusetts in the first U.S. House of Representatives, complained about a tendency of Congress: "We hear, incessantly, from the old foes of the Constitution, ‘this is unconstitutional, and that is;’ and indeed, what is not? . . . If the Constitution is what they affect to think it, their former opposition to such a nonentity was improper. I wish they would administer it a little more in conformity to their first creed." Ames...