Daily Campaign Finance Reform thread-day 6

Lawlessness usually conjures up images of a wild frontier or mobs in the streets. But the painful reality is that the supreme examples of lawlessness in our times are in the august and sedate chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States.

If you think the issue in the recent Supreme Court decision upholding campaign finance legislation is whether campaign finance reform is a good idea or a bad idea, then you have already surrendered the far more important and more fundamental idea of Constitutional government.

There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which authorizes Congress to regulate what is said by whom, or under what conditions, in a political campaign. On the contrary, the Constitution says plainly, "Congress shall make no law" -- no law! -- "abridging the freedom of speech."

The merits or demerits of this particular law, restricting what you can say when, or how much money you can contribute to get your message out, are all beside the point. Just what part of "no law" don't the Supreme Court justices understand?

The sad -- indeed, tragic -- fact is that they understand completely. They just think that this legislation is a good idea and are not going to let the Constitution stand in their way.

Moreover, they know from experience that if they can snow us with huge amounts of pious rhetoric, saying the kinds of things that the mainstream media will echo, that their wilful exercise of power will go unchallenged. In short, the Constitution be damned, we're doing our own thing.

At least the people who engaged in wild west shootouts or lynch mob violence spared us the pretence that they were upholding the Constitution. Whatever horrors these lawless and murderous people might inflict at particular times and places, they never had the power to undermine the very basis of the government of the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court does -- and is in the process of doing just that. Other courts, taking their cue from the top, have likewise behaved like little tin gods, imposing their own notions disguised as law.

One of the tragedies of our time, and a harbinger of future tragedies, is that court decisions at all levels have come to be judged by whether we agree or disagree with the policy that is upheld or overturned.

Recent controversies over gay marriage have been a classic example of failing to see the woods for the trees. The most fundamental issue is not gay marriage. The most fundamental issue is who is to decide whether or not to legalize gay marriage -- and all the other decisions that define a free, self-governing people, as distinguished from people living under dictators in black robes.

The political left is all for judicial activism, because courts can impose much of the liberal agenda that most elected officials are afraid to impose, such as racial quotas, gay marriage and driving religious expression underground.

Bitter and ugly fights over judicial nominees are one consequence of liberals' heavy dependence on judges to impose policies which elected officials dare not impose. Decent, honorable and highly qualified people like California Justice Janice Rogers Brown are smeared and lied about because they insist that what the Constitution says still matters.

Sadly, the idea that judges are to make social policy, not just enforce the Constitution and the statutes, has spread even among some conservative constituencies. The National Rifle Association, for example, attacked Justice Brown for upholding California's assault weapons ban.

The issue was not whether Justice Brown personally favored this ban or not. The issue was whether the state legislature had the right to impose such a ban. Since there is no right to bear arms in the California Constitution, and state judges are bound by federal courts' interpretation of that right in the federal Constitution, this decision was the only one to make.

We can't vote for federal judges but we can vote for those who appoint them and those who confirm them. We need to remember judges -- and the Constitution -- when we are in that voting booth, if we want our votes to continue to mean something.

Dr. Sowell is one of the best of the best. I like the fact that he has laid blame for the CFR (BCRA) debacle squarely at the feet of the very body charged with protecting our rights; the Supreme Court.

For too many years, the Senate, by virtue of its approval/vetting process, has politicized the appointments of what are supposed to be apolitical justices. This leads, as Jim Robinson well knows, directly back to the 17th Amendment. The 17th Amendment is the legislation that, fundamentally, altered this nation from a representative republic and made us a democracy. As a result of this lousy piece of legislation, states rights are virtually non-existent and Senators don't care who is watching the farm as long as they get to eat.

We need to force several things to occur to begin taking this country back:

1) the immediate repeal of BCRA (CFR) at the beginning of the new Congress,
2) the repeal of the 17th Amendment to restore states rights and allow the state legislatures to appoint their Senators rather than have them directly elected by the population,
3) modify the laws governing federal judge appointments to eliminate the appointment for life clause and make the appointments for one 10-year term with the provision that they may be re-appointed for only one additional 10-year term for a MAXIMUM total of 20 years. After that, they can just go away.

We have got to start watching what the Congress is doing much more closely in the future. CFR was never a major priority for the voters at large, and the pressure to pass it never made sense. Now we know why the Congress and Senate were in such a hurry to pass this legislation. I suspect that the same situation occurred when the 17th Amendment was passed. In the future, if an issue is not high on the priority list of voters but is on the priority list for the Congress, we propbably need to intensely scrutinize the Bill to see what is so important about it.

Laziness, lethargy, ignorance and apathy by the voters got us to this point. We know now that we cannot trust our elected representatives to perform honestly and ethically in office and that they must always be scrutinized to ensure that they are performing their duties as defined by the Constitution. Toward that end, meaningful and hard-lined term limits MUST be a priority to prevent the proliferation of career politicians. Also, we might want to consider limiting Congressional sessions to a maximum of 6 months. The longer these folks are in session, the more mischief thay make.

It might also be beneficial to have an apolitical watchdog group constantly looking over Congress' shoulder to ensure that everything they work on is aboveboard and does not reflect or suggest midnight back room deals. These folks have proven that they are not trustworthy and that we will have to take more overt measures to ensure that they are performing the voter's will in accordance with the provisions defined by the Constitution.

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