Quote Originally Posted by SwedishFish View Post
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As Strike notes, there is no right to a job. The government should not prevent you from pursuing gainful employment -- but it has no mandated requirement to provide you with employment.

Moreover, thought the preamble of the Declaration does set the tone for our form of government, it is the U.S. Constitution that delimits that government. The Declaration is mostly a catalogue of complaints listed by the colonials as their justification for telling Lord North and George Hanover to bugger off.

You might make a useful argument that a felon, having served the entirety of their mandated sentence has paid their debt to society and that the simple fact of their felonious status should not -- in and of itself -- bar them from federal employment. However, to take the stance that any and all background checking addressing past criminality is inappropriate would be a poor argument.

Is it not reasonable to assume that being adjudged a perjurer might invalidate someone as a federal judge? Or might it seem reasonable to screen out convicted drug dealers from the DEA unless and until the DEA is itself convinced that the person in question is so changed as to represent a resource rather than a liability? Is it not reasonable to screen John Hinkley out of any chance at serving on the protective detail of the Secret Service?