Posted on 11/04/2014 3:21:35 AM PST by Arthur Wildfire! March
New FBI Powers and Accountability
One thing people might ponder is just how powerful these ideas make the FBI.
— For example, if the states censor a member of the Executive Branch, that person can be monitored for the rest of his life. It’s a matter of FBI judgment just how much, and that can sound scary.
— The thought of an FBI ‘Hot Zone’ is also scary if you don’t trust the FBI.
— The thought that the FBI vets ‘Committee of Common Sense’ candidates and moniters them [that committee I briefly mentioned earlier]. That sounds a little scary too, right?
But here’s the thing — the FBI Director should be strictly term limited and REMOVED from the partizan fray. We could limit the director’s term to a tight ‘three years’.
The President will be powerless regarding the FBI too with no authority to dismiss him or her. So that takes away some of the partizanship. Instead, the FBI Director could be replaced ahead of schedule if Congress or the states are irritated. So there you are. More power, complete independence from the White House, and a need to please both congress and the states.
Now it’s time to explain how ‘competitive nomination’ works.
Competitive Nomination
Competitive Nomination is the way we can vastly reduce partizan influence in many federal organizations and the supreme Court nomination process. First the Chief State Executive [CSE] and the Committee of Common Sense each nominate someone to hold one of the following important posts ...
... such as a supreme Court Justice, FBI Director, U.S. Attorney General, Director of Homeland Security, FBI Director, and ICE Director. All are term limited for three years and can never hold the same post twice.
While the supreme Court Justices are handled with even greater deliberation and cannot be replaced prior to their term limits, all the rest of these leaders might wake up to discover that replacements are being nominated at any time.
[Note that either the Committee or the CSE could simply nominate the one who is already in the the post until the term limit expires.]
. . . .
Race-to-Approve Protocol
There’s a mandatory debate between both nominees [via videoconferencing] each day until one is approved. The process begins with an initial deliberation period of 10 days. After the ten days, the states have twenty four hours to approve one of the two nominees with a 2/3 super-majority.
If the states fail to reach that mark in time [which was really just a ‘head-start’ in a race], then the House and the states compete with each other to see who can be the first to obtain a 2/3 super-majority approval for one of the two nominees. The first one to achieve the super-majority vote is the group which approves one and disqualifies the other.
If neither the House nor the states manage to choose one within 14 days [after the nomination announcement], they lost their chance and the Senate has thirty six hours to approve one with a simple majority vote. If the Senate fails to approve one in time [which would rarely happen], then the President can simply confirm one.
[We are assuming that Congress will already have a video-conferencing session system in place so they can legislate from their home towns, which is why this process can move so quickly.]
. . . .
Then it’s the President’s turn to nominate a competitor [which could also be the one who is already in the the post]. The Race-to-Approve Protocol is repeated [between the approved nominee and the President’s], and the one approved this time is actually the one confirmed. This could either be for immediate replacement or for timely replacement when the term limit ends.
If the post is vacant during this process, then the deputy director/administrator who was personally chosen by the now-absent leader fills the post. This personally chosen deputy cannot be nominated unless it is for timely replacement [when the term limit ends] or if the ‘leader-to-be-replaced’ publicly suggests his or her deputy to be a nominee.
[It would be ideal if the deputy is trusted enough that the leader helpfully prepares him or her to be a likely replacement. But if the deputy might one day accept an early nomination, then the temptation is to keep the deputy ignorant, floundering, and unprepared. Besides, if you want to replace the leader early, why would you trust the deputy? Only a Machiavellian would want to bite the hand that feeds him.]
It is advisable for the Committee and the CSE to coordinate with the state legislatures, the House, and the Senate in advance as much as possible to help obtain their 2/3 super-majorities. Early deliberation will improve vetting that much more.
[The secret magic of this is that even though it’s a challenge for the states to unite with a 2/3 super-majority, a creepy choice would make it easy to vote against the creep. It would also be natural for the CSE to choose someone the states might think very highly of, so the 2/3 approval bar is probably reachable in many cases. This helps guarantee that only the very best ever get nominated, people with genuine talent and few serious flaws. It would also be people who show no signs of being ‘centralized power’ zealots.]
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Leaderhip Autonamy for Competitvely Appointed Leaders
Now being so vetted and limited to three years of service, these appointees control their own small executive branches and are insulated from dismissal by the President. They may hire and dismiss employees at will. They may accept volunteer assistance. [Often volunteers are blocked by ‘union rules’ and other nonsense.] They may draft their own regulations so long as they do not violate any civil rights. They are not subject to judicial review, criminal charges, or lawsuits unless censored by the states or removed from office through an impeachment trial.
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CIA and Presidential Security Reform
The CIA is no longer part of the Treasury Department. All foreign intelligence agents and property are still under the authority of the Commander in Chief as a separate branch in the military.
[While it’s tempting to even strip away the CIA from the President, Obama will be gone soon, and we still need a Commander-in-Chief who can handle overseas problems.]
Sections of the Secret Service and FBI which are tasked with presidential security also remain part of the Executive Branch and form a new presidential security agency which is temporarily arbitrated by the House Speaker until the Federal Government legislates the transition. The President may mandate fair debates between the Speaker and invited representatives to help moderate any excesses.
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Pondering the NSA
It is unclear whether the President should keep any power over the NSA or not. We are talking about counter-intel and counter-terror inside the US. The NSA monitors foreign spies and foreign terrorists as well as domestic surveillance. I for one am inclined to make the NSA Director competitively appointed as well. I would imagine that the NSA Director would work cooperatively with a NORMAL President. We could even consider an entirely different way the NSA Directorship is appointed and overseen.
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Competitive Nomination of Supreme Court Justices
Mark Levin already plans on supreme Court term limits in ‘Liberty Amendments’. That’s a great step in the right direction. But we most certainly should make it a competitive nomination.
There should be five main differences between supreme Court nominations and other competive nominations:
Supreme Court Justices should almost always be left alone unless they have three tainted opinions, and decorum-impeachment by congress should ensure good personal conduct.
Secondly, the deliberation-and-debate period should be much longer than 10 days. Perhaps 60 days.
Thirdly, it would be terrible to have a ‘blitz’ of four or five supreme Court openings filled at the same time. Each supreme Court nomination should be done one at a time so that deliberation is maximized. As noted before, it’s better to have some vacancies for a while then to fill them with dangerous choices.
Fourthly: the senior supreme court justice should be the ‘Chief’ justice [once the dangerous ones are purged]. Each then has a turn. If unwilling to be chief justice, then why would one want to be a member of that august body? So once each justice has been chief for a year, that senior member automatically retires, and timely replacements are nominated.
Fifth: It would be excellent if the outgoing senior chief justice could have public chats with each nominee not only for the nation to profit from such a meeting, but also so that the nominee can learn from the Chief Justice’s experience.
[Such a chat might also be good for all other competitive nominations too. Just something to consider. Unless someone is a golfer-in-chief, exectutive time is more scarce than scholarly time.]
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Adding to the ‘Under God’ Amendment
[Personal suggestion]
I’ve been thinking about the Age of Aquarius. We could add the following to the ‘Under God’ amendment:
“The Christians among us yearn for the Age of Aquarius and humbly beseech You, O Lord, to rule over us as our Guiding Spirit.”
If the Christians among us unite in this established prayer I believe a Good and Positive Force will indeed lead us without being a threat to the freedom of non-Christians.
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The Lower-Rung Muslims
If there were an official ‘low rung’ category regarding privacy rights, rescources can be more effectively focused in the right direction and away from mythical ‘tea party terrorists’ and the boogey men known as ‘right wing militia groups’.
Muslims might resent having fewer privacy rights, but at least they would still be as free as anyone else. And if things are done properly, the law abiding muslims should rarely even be aware of their reduced privacy unless they are prison inmates. We need the FBI and NSA to have a freer hand to monitor radical Islamic recruitment in prisons.
In fact, moderate muslims should be glad if we aggressively weed out the trouble makers who give them a bad name. If they are truly moderate, why would they not THANK us?
There are many ways we can resolve this, but I think the best is behind closed doors. The Director of Homeland, the FBI, and possibly the NSA could defer to the CSE behind closed doors [each separately] regarding what kind of surveillance procedures are legal — so long as the spying is on muslims or people from islamo-terror hot spots, the legality would be the CSE’s secret discretion. This should be highly classified, and special secret departments could be formed that are insolated from contact with the rest of the NSA and FBI.
Note that we’re assuming that the CSE and both of these directors would be term limited and held to a high standard of accountability. But the veil of secrecy would put a ‘chill’ in terrorist plotting. And of course the CSE could delegate such matters to a subordinate who specializes in counter-terrorism.
One of the unspoken problems we’ve had in fighting terrorism is that politicians are too influenced by foreign diplomats and lobbyists and legal groups such as the ACLU which are largely funded and directed by Soros and other foreign powers. None of us can imagine a CSE being ‘turned’ the same way especially when he/she is tightly term limited.
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Airline Security
Since there would be an official ‘low rung’ category regarding privacy rights, these amendments should quickly result in a smooth and more effective airline security system that emphasizes common sense, particularly when the Homeland Director is competitively nominated.
Also, for people who are not in the ‘low rung’ category, the CSE can secretly meet with the TSA executives about how airline security will be managed. Once again, secrecy will help put a ‘chill’ in terrorism plots. Profiling people based on body language ‘tells’ and physical features could help as well. For example, some islamo-terrorists shave their heads and even their chests.
We would recommend that bomb-sniffing canine units be used without any fanfare or announcements as well. In fact, worthless dogs could be a psych-ops at times.
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Restoring Sanity to Treaties
Senators have been going ‘hog wild’ with their crazed treaties. It’s even been reported off-and-on that NAFTA included a superhighway plan that runs from Mexico to Canada without any checkpoints.
There are also reports of United Nations ‘Biospheres’ where we reportedly gave the UN ownership claims on some of our national parkland.
Whether true or not, the reports are conceivable based on the way Patomac water infects people with amnesty-mania and ‘Rah-Rah-UN-Power’.
It is high time we stop the madness with a reform of treaties.
Here are some suggestions:
. . . .
Treaties v. Constutitonal Rights
A treaty is rendered invalid if it:
1. Results in the loss of a constitutional right of US citizens within our own borders.
2. Coerces behavior of U.S. citizens within U.S. borders other than in matters of international trade.
3. Misuses treaties to socially engineer U.S. society [such as foreign meddling against the death penalty, child rearing, diet, smoking, gun rights, etc. — even the U.N.’s meddling against Mother’s Day].
4. Subjects members of the US military, political leaders, or any US citizens to international trials. Being a US citizen means being subject to US law and protected by US constitutional rights. Only a sovereign nation has the right to try a US citizen for breaking a law while outside of US jurisdiction and apart from US military operations. Paramount is the sovereignty of our military. Only our military may try our military personnel. [We can negotiate with other nations on that basis.]
5. Makes it easier for over a hundred illegal immigrants to infiltrate our nation on a given year. [Temp note — In a hypothetical sense, any foreign embassy might make it possible to funnel immigrants, which we are already beginning to learn the hard way.]
6. Affects a state’s punishment of criminals within the U.S. unless it is a matter of diplomatic immunity.
7. Seeks to impose humanitarian or environmental standards on our nation and/or punish and/or fine and/or sue our government[s], and/or our citizens for failing to submit to foreign or international demands, laws, and/or guidelines.
8. Allows knowledge sharing of US military secrets with governments or their operatives unless such a treaty is approved by a 2/3 super majority in the Senate, a 2/3 super majority in the US House of Representatives, a signature of approval by the President, and simple majority approval by the Committee of Common Sense. Such a treaty expires automatically in two years.
10. Allows foreign or international roads, parks and other such [ludicrous] property-sharing schemes, property give-aways, or property transfers within our own borders beyond modestly sized embassasies. We the People only grudgingly allow the United Nations building to remain as is — the structure is far too large for our liking considering how corrupt the U.N. has been. Private property ownership that is under the jurisdiction of US law is not at issue, but any roads or land founded on a treaty-based surrender or sharing of U.S. territory due to NAFTA or any other treaty since 1990 is to be re-annexed immediately to the U.S.
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Treaty Reforms
The US House of Representatives is empowered to repeal any treaty until it is
endorsed by the CSE, two-thirds of the House, by the Committee of Common Sense, and its endorsement is signed once again by the President. [We assume it will be post-Obama before this is ratified.]
[Remember the UN’s ‘Food for Oil’ scandal? Only one of many.]
The United Nations is corrupt and dysfunctional The United States from this day forth contributes or transfers no more than $1 billion a year to the UN unless the federal government legislates new contributions. Such an added contribution budget legislation expires every time the US federal government has a lame-duck session.
We the People recommend that all other nations reduce their contributions to the UN as well. We hope and pray that a new League of Free Nations be formed that excludes totalitarian regimes from having any votes.
[If the United Nations turns beligerant ...]
The federal government is free through legislation to evict the corrupt UN body from the UN Building and the USA as a form of chastisement.
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Less Vital Ideas, but Still Exciting
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Relaxing lawsuits against property owners:
This might not even need a constitutional amendment. But it’s high time we end the silly lawsuits property owners suffer from when burglars and vandals tresspass. For example, when a driver deliberately vandalizes your yard with his car, is it wrong to set a trap in your yard to damage his vehicle? Is it wrong if a burglar steps in a wolf trap or triggers an automatic taser or triggers a pepper spray trap? [Better yet, mace spray is even more effective.] We need to stop and think here. Technology could solve many problems if the government simply allows it to. Cattle also need protection from impish tresspassers.
Perhaps states should be free to legislate bold freedoms for property owners and see how things work out.
Another problem is lawsuits against businesses when reckless daredevils injure themselves or others. These ‘nanny state’ lawsuits poison our feeling of free spiritedness and our desire to be in harmony with each other. They also discourage our children from outdoor exercize.
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[repost]
One idea I’ve been thinking about is letting veterans elect a ‘debate mandator’ who can invite guests to debate with politicians, professors, and judges.
The ‘Veteran Debate Mandator’ could have the power of law to FORCE people out of their ivory towers so that people could not only confront them about veterans, but also the ‘money-is-power’ theory can be extolled. The need for a robust economy that can support an expensive military.
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