Posted on 02/21/2009 5:26:02 PM PST by JoeA
1. Term limits at the Federal Level. The Founders never intended for the country to be ruled by a permanent political class, but rather by citizens of the republic who were engaged in the daily life of the country in ways other than as professional politicians. Their life as businessmen, farmers, merchants, and husbands and wives, would enlighten them and inform their actions and decisions during their public service.
a. One term in the Senate. Six years is more than enough time to get something done.
b. Three terms in the House. See above.
c. Two terms in the White House. Eight years in the White House is plenty of time.
2. Proposed legislation shall be limited to one issue, and bills may not be bundled with other bills. The purposes here are several:
a. Prevent the sausage-making that is the usual process in creating legislation, where large numbers of bills are packaged together to garner the largest number of votes. As we have seen all too often, representatives often vote on bills that they have not even read. Bills should stand on their own, and be passed or denied on a clear up and down vote, with direct accountability of our representatives.
b. By forcing each measure to be processed separately, we will reduce the amount of legislation produced. Hopefully, this will force Congress to work on what’s essential to the country.
c.
3. Repeal the 17th Amendment, and restore the election of Senators by the individual state legislatures. The purpose of each state appointing its Senators was to ensure that the separate autonomous state governments were represented in the national legislature. This essential part of federalism was killed when direct election of Senators was created via the 17th Amendment in 1913. Now Senators represent not the interest of the governments of their respective states, but of the population that turns out to elect them. They are nothing more than Congressman with a larger constituency.
4. Repeal the 16th Amendment, and replace it with a flat tax or other revenue generating system. The tax system in this country is a disaster, and used as a means of class warfare and as largesse to bestow on a voting block. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed: “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” We have long since passed that point.
5. Require that all bills cite the specific clause of the constitution that empowers the proposed legislation. To maintain a limited government of laws, we must remain true to the principals of the constitution. The national government may do only what is authorized, and nothing else, unless the constitution is revised to empower the government to take that action.
6. Require that all bills have a sunset clause, a date on which they expire. This will go a long way toward ending programs which have long since outlived their usefulness, and force the periodic re-evaluation of the government’s actions.
7. All candidates for offices at the Federal level must prove they meet the requirements set forth in the United States Constitution. Candidates will be required to submit Birth Certificates and other documents to prove their eligibility for office. Just like you and I do when we register our kids for school.
8. Change the immigration laws so that citizenship accrues only to the children of American citizens, natural or otherwise. If immigrants want their children to be American citizens, they should first become American citizens. No more anchor babies.
i could live with that, but for the record, I meant a super majority of states.
Absolutely no form of welfare, bailout or stipend for anything.
Sounds good so far.
Wow! That sounds great, I’ll see if I can work up the language.
Nope, I mean the guy who translates English into lawyerese and finds out where it fits in the legal code. Any halfwit can understand the faux-Latin once he has seen enough of it. I speak as one.
I'm not talking about anything like that. I'm talking about writing a piece of legislation that is easily and plainly interpreted by lawyers and judges and is otherwise well crafted. Incompetent drafting is common, particularly at the state level, but it does happen in Congress from time to time.
You don't need latin, you don't need "lawyerese." You need a competent lawyer that understands the subject matter and can also write. Banning lawyers would lead to more incompetent drafting. This, I suppose, would be good for the rest of the lawyers, since incompetent drafting means lots and lots of long, drawn out litigation. Yay! Bad for businesses, though. Sad. :(
Do you actuallythink that the lawyers in the Texas legislature actually do more than provide a rough draft, or that they care if the statute is carelessly written? IAC, more often than not he simply hands theam a proposal drafted by some lobbyist. It has been a heck of a long time since American lawyers thought of attempted to codify state law with the rigor that one finds in the European civil law. American lawyers are gunfighters, not scholars. That is why a German lawyer makes a lot less than an American lawyer, on the whole. A german lawyer can usually tell you what the law is just by looking at it. His search might take a month while an American law might take six, on similar cases.
I love it ..Lets carry it to DC when we have a million man march ...
In years past, I worked in "media relations" for my state legislature, which is to say that it was my job to spin, particularly for newly introduced bills. At least in my state, lobbyists didn't write anything. They might plant the seed for a bill in a legislator's head, but they didn't write. The actual task of writing itself was done by a separate agency (put a part of the legislature), and I suspect that this is not altogether uncommon, particularly since this is more or less how it's done at the Congressional level.
American lawyers are gunfighters, not scholars.
Yes, and I'm quite excited for all the non-lawyer legal scholars to jump in the ring and try their hand at crafting legislation. That can't possibly be a bad idea.
His search might take a month while an American law might take six, on similar cases.
Six months? Wow, that's a patient client. Where do you find those?
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