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At that point I realized that the people no longer have a voice in how this country operates.

The brilliant operating idea of the founding fathers was to create a Constitution which would protect the people against the government and protect the government against the mob. Obviously, that is a very fine line and requires continuous balancing that the experiment does not lurch too far toward tyranny by government or too far in the other direction toward tyranny by the majority.

Certainly, the bias is toward protecting the people from the government.

Put another way, when the will of the people is expressed in an unequivocal manifestation such as a referendum in California, that Democratic impulse should be accorded the greatest deference and protected from being nullified by government. To justify nullifying the expressed will of the people, there must be at minimum a provision which is repugnant to the Constitution.

In other words, the right of the minority must be grounded firmly and I might add, explicitly, in the Constitution to justify setting aside the will of the majority. The often cited example is that it's free speech which by definition needs protection against the will of the majority precisely because it is unpopular. If we define the utterance as free speech, it is protected against the will of the majority. And, especially is it protected against the will of the government which may or may not pose as representing the majority of the people.

I am at a loss to understand how proposition 187 represents a threat to constitutional democracy as it sought to "prohibit illegal aliens from using health care, public education, and other social services in the U.S. State of California. "

Obviously, without reading the case, the resort was to the 14th amendment and the equal protection of laws. The argument is that the amendment elevates persons to the level at which they enjoy the same rights as citizens. To come to this conclusion is utterly to ignore the postbellum history of reconstruction etc.

The 14th amendment was added to the Constitution to protect a minority, former slaves, from disenfranchisement by a white majority in the South and in the North as well. It accorded them citizenship and provided that, as citizens, they should receive the same treatment as other citizens. I believe that by seizing on the language and not the historical meaning of the 14th amendment, activist courts have actually subverted the meaning of the Constitution as intended by the original framers and subsequent amendments.

Enter Newt Gingrich.

How disruptive of our "rule of law", as asserted by no less an eminence than George Will, do Gingrich's remedies look in this perspective? Is it disruptive of our constitutional system to disenfranchise courts which pervert the Constitution in order to subvert the expressed will of the people?

Is it disruptive of our constitutional system to disenfranchise courts which pervert the Constitution in order to subvert the expressed will of the people?

I agree with Gingrich. George Will went over to the Dark Side a long time ago...you are known by the company you keep.

Federal Judge Marianna R. Pfaelzer (a Jimmy Carter appointee) was the real villain of the Prop 187 piece. Her accomplices were the unwitting [then] CA Attorney General Dan Lungren, who didn't vigorously pursue action on the appeal in the Ninth Circus; and later liberal Democrat Gov. Gray Davis, who ended the appeals process instead of representing the will of his own state's people.

Here's the history of Prop 187 as presented by The California Coalition for Immigration Reform: Proposition 187 History

From the legal perspective, which you appear qualified to appreciate, here is constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein's "take" on the sad story of Prop 187: Fein on Prop 187

It's a pretty cynical and depressing tale for those of us who believe in the Constitution.

After I posted #74 I found some information in another thread that seems like an exact description of what the U.S. is currently experiencing: Democratic Totalitarianism. That certainly was the case with Prop 187.

The following quotes Lawrence Sellin from The Post and Email (URL below). I think he perfectly describes the situation that conservatives of all stripes, especially the Tea Party, are so concerned about.

"The American republic has entered the first stage of decline. It has become a totalitarian democracy, a political system described by Israeli historian J. L. Talmon, in which lawfully elected representatives rule a nation state whose citizens, although granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of government.

"In every sense of the term, we have a rogue government, which has been hijacked by an oligarchy composed of a self-serving permanent political class, supported by an obsequious press and financed by and beholden to wealthy special interests in order to pursue personal power and profit at the expense of ordinary Americans; the very people who pay the nation’s bills and fight her wars.

"Politicians buy votes with our money, steal more money from our wallets and then repeat the process. It is a method designed to reward special interests in return for kickbacks in the form of campaign funding and other benefits in order to maintain themselves as permanent political parasites in Washington, D.C."

From: http://www.thepostemail.com/2011/12/23/how-obama-escapes-justice-a-congress-of-whores/ As far as I can tell Newt is the only Republican candidate who sees that issue clearly and is prepared to do something about it. That's why the Republican Establishment hates and fears him: he threatens to derail their Gravy Train.