<p>People who think of “blah blah blah” as inciteful commentary rarely get the point themselves.</p>
<p>The reason stray people, such as supreme court justices, et.al., care about what “politicians” like Jefferson said is because you have a good chance of understanding the words they wrote, if you have a sense of what those words meant to them, and in what contexts they used them elsewhere. The words of the Constitution stand by themselves, but such writings as the Federalist Papers help clarify what their words meant.</p>
<p>“If he really would have cared about it that much he would have put it in the Constitution.” Why do you assume the founding fathers didn’t put it in the Constitution? 200 years of Supreme Court justices happen to think they did.</p>