Posted on 10/10/2007 6:40:54 PM PDT by seanrobins
The presidential candidates are offering prescriptions for everything from Iraq to healthcare, but listen closely. Their fixes are situational and incremental. Meanwhile, the underlying structural problems in American politics and government are systemic and prevent us from solving our most intractable challenges.
If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention.
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A few examples:
* Restoring the war powers balance. The framers split authority concerning matters of war-making between the president (commander in chief) and Congress (declaring war). Does anyone seriously believe that they would have approved of the executive department waging years-long wars without the explicit approval of the legislature? Yet the advantages accruing to any president -- the unitary nature of the office, the swift action that only he can take in a hair-trigger world, his dominance of the televised public forum -- have created an emperor as much as a president. The constitutional balance of shared war-making must be restored.
The president should have the freedom to commit troops for up to six months, under procedures similar to that of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. But a new constitutional amendment should require that after six months -- and every six months thereafter -- both houses of Congress, by affirmative vote and without filibusters, would have to approve any extension. If one house votes no on extending, all combat troops must be withdrawn within a year.
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
And, no, I don't think that the Founders would be shocked, as Sabato suggests, to find that the Constitution has held up as well as it has over all these years.
Sabato seems to think that the sheer passage of time has left the Constitution moribund and draped in cobwebs, that we need to shake off with a new constitutional convention.
Ye, Gods! Look at how the Libs work hard to pervert the Constitution as it is. Can you imagine what they would do with -- as Sabato seems to suggest -- a clean slate?
Man the lifeboats!
It’s simple: The Constitution is the only thing standing in the way of tyranny. It must go!
Let me guess: He wants to substitute the Communist Manifesto for the current U.S. Constitution?
Larry Sabato is a putz
It does not need to be rewritten...only reread.
Amen!
All we really need is an amendment requiring our gov’t to quit violating the existing constitution.
Sabato is a socialista bent on dragging us into that brave new world.
It will be time to start shooting if they go after the Constitution like that. I’ll not go gentle into that goodnight.
I wonder if Laura Ingraham knew him when she was at UVA?
“It does not need to be rewritten...only reread.”
They can’t read in the first place.
On a side note, are you by any chance the same Bandersnatch that posts over at 5’s?
It would devolve into a "kangaroo convention," and we would wind up with gems like "The Freedom From Gun Violence Amendment" and the "Economic Justice and Democracy Amendment."
At least half of the nation would utterly reject the validity of anything coming out of such a kangaroo convention, and that would mean certain civil war.
Well put.
A President might get away with sending a fleet halfway around the world and sticking Congress with paying their way back. But he couldn't leave troops overseas for years without funding.
I was there 75-79. Even then he was considered a Major Guru.
“It does not need to be rewritten...only reread.”
Amen.
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