Ping. More coming up ...
Great thinking! This, and the Liberty Amendments.
I’ll add that it would help garner GOP support if the threat of multi-state secession was on the table, as Plan B.
Re #6, are you on crack? sniffing glue?
I like the solution from the 1780’s. Try The CONSTITUTION!
This shotgun approach to amending the Constitution has virtually no chance of succeeding, imo. That said, I applaud your thinking outside the box (way outside) and attempting to get others to begin thinking.
To me, a constitutional convention (state-initiated only) limited to only two things, perhaps three, would go a long way toward restoring the original intent of the framers.
One, an amendment that requires Congress to stay within revenues when appropriating funds for spending...requiring a balanced budget. There would need to be a provision to allow an exception in cases of national emergency.
Two, an amendment that restores the original intent behind the enumerated powers principle. This would force all federal spending to cease on all programs not specifically enumerated (with debate on issues such as phasing in the cuts, applying “savings” to retire the national debt, returning “saved” monies to the states/taxpayers, etc).
The only other possible amendment would be one to establish term limits on appointed judges (including the USSC).
bttt
You have obviously been thinking hard about all of this. It is a new thought to me that senators and congressmen might be required to debate.But it is not a new thought to me that when you are considering a convention, you can think outside the box. For example, you could dismiss any or all SCOTUS justices, and nobody could say it was unconstitutional!
That goes for the POTUS as well - if the states find a POTUS unacceptable, they can amend the Constitution to assign the job to some other individual. Probably but not necessarily VPOTUS.
Always provided that you can get the supermajority of state legislatures you need to pull it off. And that, say what you will about the high point the Republicans now enjoy, is not a barrier to be taken lightly.
IMHO it is fundamental to the legitimacy of the Constitution that it be, to parody Hobbes, “unnasty, unbrutish, and short. It has to be a compact statement of enduring principle and due process. And I just don’t see adding neither-fish-nor-fowl officers to the Constitution, if that’s what you’re doing.
We need a way of impeaching a rogue POTUS who has over 1/3 hard-core support in the Senate. It seems to me that that should be possible, but that it should be painful for those who do it.
FL 2000 should never have happened for a number of reasons, but the state legislature of FL should have “manned up” to their job and decided the election. If you are amending the Constitution, make that explicitly the responsibility of the legislature, so that there be no mistaking what should happen when the count is “too close to call.”
IMHO it should not require an amendment to fix it - it is implied already, but few see it - but, since memory of living man runneth not to the contrary, the US has had an Established Press. It is unified by the AP and the other wire services, it claims preternatural objectivity, and it controls the debate in this country. We can assemble a million protesters in Washington - that happened on September 12, 2009 - without any political effect on anyone but ourselves. The Established Press had no obligation to cover it - and they didn’t. The Established Press acts as a single entity with many faces but no actual diversity.
The legitimacy of the FEC depends on the conceit of journalistic objectivity, without which there is no sense to drawing a distinction between a free press and “campaign contributions.” But of course what we have is a Jonathan Gruber press - the furthest thing from objectivity, divorced from the very thought of disinterested analysis. So the FEC is illegitimate, and should be disbanded. Simiilarly, any thought of a “Fairness Doctrine” runs into the same objection, and the FCC should be defanged and made politically agnostic.
As I say, this is logically implied in the Constitution as it is, but I certainly would have no objection to making it more explicit. Tho I wouldn’t appreciate a failed effort at such . . .
“[And that just happened. The democrats hadn’t been this weak since the 1920s at the state and local level — a different party back then. They were klansmen more than leftist.”
Plenty of them were leftists.
This has been vetted by some outspoken critics, but their attempts were ineffective.