Also, it was either James Madison or Alexander Hamilton that said, in the Federalist Papers, that a Bill of Rights would be unnecessary since the federal government's powers were limited and did not allow for the infringement of certain rights to begin with.
Everyone above is correct. Before the Bill of Rights was added, the Constitution included nothing but enumerated powers (along with checks and balances and instructions about how the branches should operate). If the Founders/Framers did not intend for those enumerated powers to be an exhaustive list, and if the government's powers were basically unlimited, they would not have even bothered to enumerate powers in the first place. After all, every enumerated power in Article I, Section 8 is implicitly granted to a government that is granted carte blanche.
In other words, the mere presence of enumerated powers indicates those powers comprise an exhaustive list.
As TastyWheat said, some Founders/Framers argued that a Bill of Rights was entirely unnecessary, because of the fact that the federal government was only permitted certain powers. The Anti-Federalists wanted one anyway though...probably just in case some dishonest politician someday found a way to abuse the elastic clause to deny the people some of their most basic rights (I'm speculating here, but the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers would contain their actual reasons). However, there was a problem: By creating a Bill of Rights, they
knew that would mean the Constitution would no longer include only enumerated powers. Because of that, some were afraid that by explicitly denying some powers, that would make it less obvious that the enumerated powers were the ONLY powers government had. In other words, they were afraid that a Bill of Rights might open the door for dishonest politicians (e.g. Barack Obama) to construe the words of the Constitution against it, coming up with loose and faulty interpretations that claim every power not explicitly denied is implicitly granted.
So...they came up with a solution to the problem of interpretation, and that's what the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are for: The Ninth reaffirmed the idea that those rights explicitly granted to the people (and powers the government was restricted from having) were NOT an exhaustive list...and the Tenth reaffirmed the idea that those powers explicitly granted to the federal government were INDEED an exhaustive list. In other words, the Tenth Amendment demands a strict construction of the rest of the Constitution, explicitly stating that all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government are implicitly denied and therefore belong to the states (and/or the people, respectively).
Bottom line: From the Constitutional standpoint, the Obama people have absolutely no foot to stand on when they claim that any power not explicitly denied is implicitly granted.
