How would you like to change the United States Constitution?

How would you like to change the United States Constitution?

I would like to add a Constitutional amendment designed to weaken the power of the Supreme Court in three ways:

First, it would require a two thirds majority for any Supreme Court decision. If something is “unconstitutional” it should be more obviously so.

Second, it should be possible to overturn any Supreme Court decision with a two thirds majority in each House of Congress and a Presidential signature. Overturning a Supreme Court decision should not require a Constitutional amendment.

Third, there should be re-call elections for unpopular Supreme Court justices. Many states already have these.

I would also like to end the Senate filibuster and give the President line item veto power. If the Supreme Court was weakened, these would not require Constitutional amendments.

 

The best change the American Constitution could ever obtain, would be the ability to change it. Honestly, it's exceptionally difficult to change it and alter it. It's not a modern piece of Legislature in the slightest. That would be my #1 priority. I'd make it flexible.

 

The Constitution really does not apply anymore. I mean, the Fourth Amendment has been pretty much thrown out the window, along with the First and Fifth. Most Americans don't even know what the Constitution is, so the government can just do whatever they want knowing the public is more concerned about football. There has been more destruction done to the Bill of Rights and Constitution in the past eight years than since the Constitution was drafted up. 80-90% of the public could not care less because they can still go to the mall on the weekends and order a Big Mac at the drive-thru at McDonalds.

I mean, Bush is a de facto dictator. He has the ability to declare war alone and pretty much do whatever else he wants without congressional approval. (Congress has pretty much totally rolled over for him anyway.) So regardless of what the Constitution says, things have eroded so much that it really doesn't matter anymore because whatever the president says, goes. Remember he is the "decider" and he decides what's best for America.

 

The Bush administration has essentially tried to run its own government at Gitmo outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. court system. It wants to have it both ways and run such a junta at U.S. taxpayer expense. They should either start their own country with their own funding or abide by the U.S. legal system if they want to operate at taxpayer expense. Bush has suffered 3 major setbacks in the Supreme Court on Gitmo related issues. I would think twice about shifting power from the Supreme Court to the White House and Congress.

The concept of recalls may sound good on the surface but it lends itself to political abuse. Look what has happened in the past ten years in the U.S. with recall attempts on governors and other political positions. It becomes a tool to cripple a current administration, not unlike the Independent Counsel Statute (which didn't get renewed after all the abuse during the Iran Contra and Lewinsky hearings).

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I don't think people in the USA should be apathetic. It's not very difficult to learn what is and isn't in the Constitution and they seem to teach it in their curriculum?!

The executive body of the cabinet is never expost facto, the government is not the controlling force of society and somehow operates with rule of law rather than arbitrarily. You can't touch the Constitution unless you get bumfucked through the entire Congress and be approved by a 2/3rds majority.

So... how often is 52 states going to reach a 2/3rds majority on a Constitutional document??? Close to the lotto. But remember, the states weren't even colonized to cover 52 states whatsoever at the time.

And for that reason the judges write laws and the president does too. It's a distribution of executive power based on de-centralized states from the get-go who "elect" the voice of the state with significant appointing powers. There's no check in my balance.

The whole national justice/law system is designed to make the President barter to make executive agreements where the states of the union have their own Senetorial race.

But it's simple to view the bicameral parallel trig the distribution of Senate-Congress power as a piece of legislature that forever could not be fixed.

And it's that reason that I'd make it flexible first.

 

They should make nature legal.

 

That was very good.

 

There are 50 states in America -- not 52.

 

No, it's really not taught in school. I mean, it is taught, but given the bare minimum of attention. School does more to focus on international politics than anything else. It does more to further the idea of global citizenship than national citizenship. Of course this is no accident.

That's simply not true and very naive thinking. I really don't know many people who believe that, other than those who blindly believe the government is working in their best interests. Ever heard of executive orders and signing statements? PDD-51?? Last time I checked, the Congress has no say in executive orders and presidential directives. And even if the Congress did have a say -- and they do on some things -- they more often than not side with the president rather than the American people. They are turncoats.

 

Guam and the Virgin Islands don't count as states?

 

What's PDD-51? refresh me.

 

Nope. Nor does Puerto Rico.

 

Wonder where she got that idea, Mr. NAU

 

PDD-51 authorizes Bush to openly declare himself dictator in the event of a "national emergency." In the event of a "national emergency" Bush can take full control over the entire government, bypassing local, state, federal and tribal levels. All the president has to do is himself declare a national emergecy, for whatever reason he decides, without any say whatsoever from Congress. It completely exclues Congress from governance in a declared emergency and places all control into the hands of the executive branch.

The president also has the ability to suspend elections in the event he declares such an emergency.

 

That's ummm... The terrorist act from 2002? I forget, but tell me why they call it PDD-51?

I am sure I read this legislature, one wikipedia in fact, but my memory isn't working tonight.

 

This subject comes up once and a while and I favour (like Thomas Jefferson) the view that the US constitution should be re-written from time to time (he thought 20 years I think 50)

Here are some of my thoughts from a previous thread (I think the quote that starts it comes from Rat).

Tear up the constitution
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=146334&highlight=Tear+constitution


Post 1

Someone said that –

"Balbus thinks the U.S. Constitution is outdated and should be abolished. Well, I guess he has more in common with George W. Bush than he probably thought"

It is clear that this person doesn’t know very much about US history for actually it means I have more in common with Thomas Jefferson who wanted to have a new constitution re-written every 20 years or so.

"Jefferson's dedication to "consent of the governed" was so thorough that he believed that individuals could not be morally bound by the actions of preceding generations. This included debts as well as law. He said that "no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation." He even calculated what he believed to be the proper cycle of legal revolution: "Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it is to be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

In fact many people have believed that the US constitution should have been re-written or dramatically altered.

Here is some historical background

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_newc.html



Post 3

I would favour a complete re-write.

It seems clear to me that the whole system is not working.

That’s not to say I would throw out the baby with the bath water, there is a lot of good stuff in it (or been added to it).

I think my own area of concern is with the forms of government.

I’m more in favour of a parliamentary system over that of a presidential one.

I’m more in favour of a proportional representational voting system over that of a first past the post system.

Post 9

As I see it one of the major problems with the US political landscape is limitation of having only two parties that are in many ways just two branches of the right wing.

A system with much more proportional representation in it would help.

At the moment the left wingers have very little alternative to voting for a centre right political group or allow a more right wing group to get into power. This is not a very good choice and it is not surprising that many are less than enthusiastic about it or willing to put their all into the campaign. You only need to see the vitriol the US Green party got for ‘slitting’ the vote to see that something is deeply wrong.

On the other side we have rational pragmatic conservative sharing a bed with ideological fanatics of the religious fundamentalists, free market fantasist and Straussian con artists.

Under PR this moribund system could become dynamic people would have real choice and be able -with conviction - to campaign for what they believed in.

Post 12

Here is a Proportional Representation, Frequently Asked Questions site

http://ed.labonte.com/pr.html

With a US flavour and a link to - The Center for Voting and Democracy

http://www.fairvote.org/
Post 16

Think about it -

“Under a pure proportional representation system, if a party won 21 percent of the votes, it would receive 21 percent (at least roughly) of the seats in the legislature; in a first-past-the-post system, a party could receive 21 percent of the votes (or even, theoretically, 49 percent of the votes) and zero seats in the legislature.”
Third party (United States)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_party_(United_States)

For a time when PR was used in the US try - A Brief History of Proportional Representation in the United States
Which tells us -

“For example, Barber found that choice voting produced fairer and more proportional representation of political parties. In particular, it eliminated the tendency of winner-take-all systems to exaggerate the seats given to the largest party and to underrepresent the smaller parties. In the election before the adoption of PR in Cincinnati, the Republicans won only 55% of the vote, but received 97% of the seats on the council. In the first PR election, the results were much more proportional, with the Republicans winning 33.3% of the seats based on 27.8% of the vote, and the rival Charter party winning 66.7% of the seats on 63.8% of the vote.
Similarly, in the last pre-PR election in New York City, the Democrats won 95.3% of the seats on the Board of Alderman with only 66.5% of the vote. During the use of PR, the Democrats still had a majority of the seats, but it was a much smaller one that reflected more accurately their strength in the electorate. In 1941, proportional representation gave the Democrats 65.5% of the seats on 64% of the vote. Moreover, it also produced representation for the Republicans and three smaller parties in proportion to their voting strength. Similar results occurred in the other PR cities, demonstrating that this system greatly improved the accuracy of partisan representation.
Proportional representation also encouraged fairer racial and ethnic representation. It produced the first Irish Catholics elected in Ashtabula, and the first Polish-Americans elected in Toledo. In Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Toledo, African-Americans had never been able to win city office until the coming of PR. Significantly, after these cities abandoned PR, African-Americans again found it almost impossible to get elected.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/...%20of%20PR.htm

**


Since then I’ve read a number of articles that say PR isn’t against the constitution as it now stands and that even the presidency could use the system.

Having said that I’m still with Jefferson about needed re-writes and lean toward a more parliamentary system, a clearer division between the executive and the judiciary and more control over Presidential appointees (for example they need to be elected officials that can be thrown out by the people).

 

Rat

Once again you claimed to know what’s wrong but you don’t seem to have a solution, in the past you seemed to be in favour of ‘restoring’ the constitution (although you didn’t seem capable of explaining what that meant) so what is your present position?

Is it that the only thing Americans can do is run around in circles shouting ‘we’re doomed”?

 

Why would you weaken the supreme court? The whole point of a powerful supreme court is to have the power to check both congress and the president. And if the congress can just override a supreme court decision, it destroys the purpose of the court to define what laws are constitutional or not. Look at the 30's, alot of FDR's programs got passed, but alot were declared unconstitutional by the supreme court, so FDR's response to hearing the laws can't go into force because they've been decreed unlawful? Hell let's put more judges on the court, that way more people will agree us, even he wasn't popular enough to do that though.

Also it doesn't take a constitutional amendment to overturn a supreme court decision, the supreme court itself can overturn past decisions.

As Lincoln said our constitution works fine, it's not our job to overthrow it but to overthrow the men who pervert it.(and jesus christ don't turn this into a debate on how Lincoln breached the constitution)

 

I think the first thing that should be added is the right to vote in federal elections.

 

No, that is not it. PDD-51 is from May of '07. PDD stands for Presidential Decision Directive.

This article lays it out well:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HI20070521&articleId=5720