Gingrich: Gov't branches should rule 2 out of 3

I read it. Every page. Here is what he proposes,

Electing the right Senators
Of course. Everyone always thinks they voted for the right guy though.

Nominating and Confirming the right Judges
Of course. Everyone always thinks they nominated and confirmed the right guy though.

Setting Limitations on Federal Court Jurisdiction
Already done.

Impeachment Power
Of course but that has been rarely done. Poor decisions are overturned or make it to the USSC where there will never be a 2/3'rd vote to impeach five to nine judges over a decision.

Congress Can Create Statutory Guidelines for the Impeachment of Federal Judges
Okay.

Judicial Accountability Hearings
Haul in a judge to speak meanly to him or her?

Abolish Judgeships and Lower Federal Courts
Been done before and could have a positive effect but even Newt says, "Other constitutional options, including impeachment, are better suited in most circumstances..."

Spending Power
Goes with the above.

Executive and Legislative Branch Adoption of Originalism
Of course.

Limiting the General Application of a Judicial Decision
"limit the application of a Supreme Court decision to only the litigants involved" is already done. Obama did it even with the Obamacare. Nothing new here.

Ignoring a Judicial Decision
Challenging Precedents via the Solicitor General
Every president already does that.

Statements of Executive Branch and Legislative Branch Policy Directed to the Judicial Branch
Congress already voices its displeasure with resolutions and such.

Make the Issue of Defeating Judicial Supremacy a Campaign Issue
Okay.

A Role for State Legislatures and the People
Okay.

A Role for Law Schools
Okay.

So there is nothing new here except that Newt went way, way beyond that in his appearance in FTN. That is one of the big problems with Newt. He likes to shock and awe his audience and too often leaves them more shocked than awed.

Example,

Schieffer: Alright here's another one, this is now. Next year the Supreme Court is going to take up Obama's healthcare proposal. What if they throw it out? Can President Obama then say I'm sorry boys, I'm just going to go ahead and implement it. Could he do that?

Gingrich: The key question is, what would the congress then do? Because there are three branches...

Schieffer: But could he do that?

Gingrich: He could try to do that. And the congress would then cut him off. Here's the key -- it's always two out of three. If the president and the congress say the court is wrong, in the end the court would lose. If the congress and the court say the president is wrong, in the end the president would lose. And if the president and the court agreed, the congress loses

Do you really want to vote for someone who says that Obama could just go ahead and implement Obamacare even if the USSC overturns it?

Not that I disagree with newt’s plan of subordinating the judicial branch. But this will lead to a political war between the republican and democrat factions over control of the same courts just as Ron Paul suggested it will.
This I believe is on net a very good thing over the long run. I very much encourage & support such a political war because it’s inevitable result will be to devalue and largely defang the Federal Court system. As the Federal courts must convict people of federal crimes the slowing down(defanging) of the same courts will nearly have a similar effect on the rest of the Federal government domestically where that court applies. (Note the military & foreign policy does not need Federal court approval to have effect. Foreign countries are not usually “innocent until proven guilty”).

________________________________________
Just in case that was not clear enough the Logic behind this is quite simple:
1: There is no way either party(republican or democrat) can replace all the Federal judges now in existence in the time they hold office. Unlike in Thomas Jefferson’s or even Lincoln’s time there are simply too many of em, and our elected officials in the Federal Government structurally are still limited to acting only so many objects with in their period of power.
(It should be noted those objects which they address can either be foreign in nature like trade and border policy or domestic in nature such as was formerly the responsibility of our individual, local, and State domains. (Like health, education, roads, and criminal justice, ect). As the Feds attempt to address more of the domestic they inherently sacrifice in the foreign.)

It should also be noted that our Federal Government is already beyond its maximum capacity. Even with the expanded federal benches, such as exist today, trials still take forever and Congress & the president still don’t have enough time to properly find & appoint enough Federal judges.
So there must either be fewer of them judges (Thus slower enforcement of federal edicts) or judicial peace & longevity (as exist to some limited extent now).

2: A smaller federal judiciary will be able to take on fewer cases thereby leaving a larger share of the judicial load to the States from which there will be no timely appeal.
In short our States will have their way until one of the few federal judges can get around to imposing their will. With such a smaller Federal judiciary as would be required by one appointed every 8 years, and a large federation & population. That weight could be justy long enough for the state sentence to be served thus rendering the Federal edict mute.

So by all means bring on & encourage this war, and the days where the Federal Government is largely replaced. The leftist cannot practically wage it successfully within the confines of our system structurally. Their Big Centralized government socialism will hit the wall of their own micromanaging capabilities.

Well, basically, it is two out of three. If the congress and the president decide against the judiciary, they’ll have the hammer. And I believe that a President Gingrich would use that constitutional hammer to give the liberal activist judiciary a run for their money. Believe he’s even suggested the congress moves to shutdown the liberal activist ninth circuit court. No doubt he’d sign it if they pass it and it’d be a done deal.

“”Imagine if the Supreme Court ruled against Obamacare only to have President Obama and Congress ignore the ruling!”

Imagine if Congress passed laws against illegal aliens, and all 3 branches ignore the ruling!

Oh, wait ... you don’t have to imagine.”

The system was designed to prevent abusive act, not to garrente the provision of any service, including but not limited to border control.

In this way the Federal courts can stop the enforcement of a federal law, just as the president can stop the enforcement, and congress can refuses to pass the law in the first place, or defend its enforcement.

This is a concept shockingly many conservatives don’t understand. They think the machine must be successful in its objectives no matter the cost. But in fact the whole structure of the machine was to prevent injury in operation not garrente effective or effecent service.

There are a thousand ways to make a goverment more efcent & effective at providing the Federal Goverment responsibility then the system layed out in the 1787 Federal Constitution.

It’s the left who uses the courts to legislate by judicial fiat. Then they say, well things like abortion are protected by the constitution, and we can’t do anything about it! They get what they want and they don’t have to take responsibility for it. It’s a laughable proposition to say conservatives are at risk of losing their agenda if they don’t have courts out there to overrule the other two branches.

Let’s not use the health care mandate as a counterexample either. It’s such a narrow, unusual case. And as Romney stated today on FOX, it’s extremely easy to simply rewrite the mandate as a tax increase, and then give everyone who buys health insurance a tax credit. If the Democrats had been smart enough to write it that way in the bill, we wouldn’t have a chance of overturning it in the courts, since that kind of gaming of the tax system goes on all the time.

I think Newt’s idea is fantastic. It’s a totally separate question as to whether it requires a constitutional amendment to enact or not vs. whether it’s a good idea. Conservatives have nothing to fear from letting WE THE PEOPLE make the law in this country as opposed to an unelected monarchy of judges. Certainly many of our amendments have a tradition of moving us closer and closer to a more direct democracy, which of course does have some risks associated with it. This is a debate well worth having.

If nothing else, a bold and fresh idea like this is going to push the Freddie Mac stuff off of the headlines.

Yes, because that’s a big IF. The Democrats already lost control of Congress and wouldn’t be able to overturn the courts in this case. Newt’s proposal puts the power in the hands of the people. If they hate a Supreme Court ruling, they can then elect people to both of the other branches who will overturn it.

I don’t see how you can make an argument against democracy and for dictatorial rule just because you hope it will work out in your favor maybe this year and maybe once in a while. We already have a history of it working out in liberals’ favor far more often. Liberal policy is much harder to get the majority of the country to go along with, hence the courts have become a cynical tool of the left.

Frankly, I’ve heard enough whining about the Supreme Court from the right for my entire life and very few proposals to actually do something about it. This is a much-needed and very belated start to a serious and substantive discussion aimed at solving the problem.

As for Obamacare, conservatives are DREAMING if they think the courts are the poison pill that will stop socialized medicine in its tracks. There’s no court remedy for a single-payer welfare system. And replacing the mandate with a tax and corresponding tax credit if you buy insurance produced virtually the same result. In fact, I can see the courts upholding Obamacare by arguing that it, for all intents and purposes, already functions as a tax and tax credit. No, the remedy for Obamacare has to come through legislation, not through the courts.

And, frankly, it would help to hear what the GOP’s proposal is for making health care more affordable for the middle class. Government intervention? A switch to a completely unfettered, free market system? Dealing with malpractice insurance? It’s been a real shame that the debates have focused solely on the individual mandate. Health care is a far bigger issue than just that and even the concept of socialized medicine doesn’t live or die by the idea of a mandate.

Sorry, but the MIB have these units in place all over our country; remember??

Eerily familiar...

Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.

16. Ministry Of Truth

.......

The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below.

The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.

In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs.

There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed.

And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.

“And notice how many Freepers are doing drive by’s and making snarky comments based solely on the headlines”

The process of continuous alteration ...

Just a start...

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I agree that the Founders designed a two out of three balance. Terri Schiavo would still be alive if that balance had prevailed in Florida.

The illegal use of executive orders didn’t start in 1994.

Your lack of knowledge is as profound as your incorrect assessment of Newt's intellect and your overinflated belief in your own. Clearly you are one of those to whom was referred in the old adage, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."

So Mr. Most Knowledgeable FReeper of All Time, and Obviously Brilliant Constitutional Scholar:

Tell me, do you think the Framers intended that the President and the Congress could together abrogate any provision in the Constitution that they would agree to eliminate?

ML/NJ

Maybe that part was spin but I frequently hear him talking about smarter government solutions. The Conservatives talk about giving power back to the states.

We need a .gov that will stop spending, stop suing states and investigating our Sheriffs.

Wow! What a compelling argument . . . not. It's a dodge.

Do you think the fact that the Court has refrained from curbing its own power by returning to its Constitutional charter is an unexpected phenomenon? LOL! I guess you never learned the old adage from Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Or . . . more earthy but equally accurate, allowing the foxes to watch the hen house.

I guess it's too much to hope that you might actually read Newt's white paper, or for that matter the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. Have you even read Marbury v. Madison and the contemporary analyses? Did you know that Marbury was a political decision more than a legal decision, that Marshall, who wrote the opinion was directly involved in the act which spurred the case, that he was Secretary of State in the Adams Administration whose actions led to the case over which he presided? Opinions are nice, but informed opinions are far preferable.

Here's an easy one. Show me where in the Constitution, the concept of judicial review is written. Show me the basis for Marbury v. Madison in the Constitution. You're so certain it's true, it should be a simple thing to provide its provenance.

While the length of time a ruling is upheld holds sway, sometimes considerable sway, over the court and stare decisis, by itself it in no way proves constitutionality. Wickard v. Filburn has been the law of the land for nigh on 70 years, but it remains one of the most egregious and urgently needed to be overturned decisions the Court has ever made. Roe v. Wade has now been the law of the land for almost 40 years. Is that now sacrosanct? Time means nothing when it comes to constitutionality, only on the willingness of Justices to strike down said ruling.

So yes, from my reading of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers and other sources, both recent and historical, I do "personally feel [and know] that it is unconstitutional."

. . . and yes, "I really think that's a good argument."

Here's another old adage from one of our Founding Fathers: "Right is right, even if everyone is against it and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.

Of course not, except through the means of passing, with the concurrence of 3/4 of the states, an amendment to the Consitution. To what provision are you referring? Where has any such suggestion been made?

You just nailed it. That is exactly what the SCOTUS is; An Oligarchy. They are appointed in a partisan manner, by one individual and their rule can last a lifetime.

Why on Earth, are they not elected and have term limits? They certainly should be.

Appoint the correct kind of judges. Overturn their outrageous rulings by passing revised laws, or even constitutional amendments. Elect better representatives (in the Senate) to get better judges confirmed.

Nobody is arguing that judges can’t be impeached. Just that they can’t be peached because Newt or some others disagree with the Judges’ rulings.

Where has any such suggestion been made?

It was made by your boy, Newt. Isn't that what this thread is (or was) about?

(FTR, I have been and might again be a Newt supporter depending upon what choices I am given. Newt is certainly preferable to Obama and to Romney IMHO.)

ML/NJ

Actually, PSYCHO-FREEP, the whole idea behind appointment with concurrence of the Senate was to avoid the politicization of the Court.

Note that it is the Senate to whom that "advice and consent" was assigned, not the House. That was because the Senate was supposed to be populated by men who had been named by the state legislatures and therefore were deemed less likely to be subject to the whims and winds of political ideology.

The whole thing began to fall apart with the passage of the 17th Amendment which passed the election of Senators to the general electorate (making the system less republican and more democratic) and thus turning the Senate into as politically charged a body as the House.

From there to where we are today is but a short trip. Once politics began to enter into the judicial appointments and judges began to make their rulings based upon ideology rather than what the Constitution and the Law said, it was inevitable that the SCOTUS would become a highly politicized body where ideology rather than temperament and scholarship became of paramount importance. This journey was greatly accelerated when liberals came to realize that they could not push their agenda through Congress, but if they appointed the right Justices and judges, they could get their agenda made into law by judicial fiat.

The intent of the lifetime appointments was the same, to isolate the Justices from the winds of political change--that fell apart when they began to make political decision, as well.

What we need is a revitalization of the American electorate, they need to be educated in our history and the Constitution and then the 17th Amendment needs to be revoked and the "several States" returned their representation in Congress (which was the whole idea behind how Senators were originally put in office).

Sorry for the lecture. You probably know most of this, but I like to be thorough.:)