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Let’s Give Up on the Constitution
The New York Slimes ^ | December 31, 2012 | LOUIS MICHAEL SEIDMAN

Posted on 12/31/2012 11:25:05 AM PST by Timber Rattler

AS the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Consider, for example, the assertion by the Senate minority leader last week that the House could not take up a plan by Senate Democrats to extend tax cuts on households making $250,000 or less because the Constitution requires that revenue measures originate in the lower chamber. Why should anyone care? Why should a lame-duck House, 27 members of which were defeated for re-election, have a stranglehold on our economy? Why does a grotesquely malapportioned Senate get to decide the nation’s fate?

Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse. Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: anticonstitution; constitution; newyorktimes; trialballoon
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To: EQAndyBuzz

Not this American Jew....


21 posted on 12/31/2012 1:14:32 PM PST by Braak (The US Military, the real arms inspectors!)
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To: Timber Rattler
I whipped this communist's arse in another thread today. Everyone here knows that he is a communist and anti American. If they kill the US Constitution... there is nothing left to legally or morally bind us to this once great but now cancerous federation.

LLS

22 posted on 12/31/2012 1:16:48 PM PST by LibLieSlayer (FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!)
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To: Timber Rattler

Without the Constitution the Federal Government has no legal authority. The States are then Independent. For the States existed before the Federal Government did.


23 posted on 12/31/2012 1:21:01 PM PST by MCF
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To: Timber Rattler

Without the Constitution the Federal Government has no legal authority. The States are then Independent. For the States existed before the Federal Government did.


24 posted on 12/31/2012 1:21:17 PM PST by MCF
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To: FlingWingFlyer
Why don’t jackasses like this moron just leave the country?

I'd guess neither Cuba nor North Korea would take him.

25 posted on 12/31/2012 1:26:03 PM PST by Standing Wolf
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To: Timber Rattler

can we just shoot these people? or at the very least, deport them?


26 posted on 12/31/2012 1:29:43 PM PST by sten (fighting tyranny never goes out of style)
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To: Timber Rattler
our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

The problems caused by an evil, corrupt, and abusive government is worse than any problems caused by the obedience to the Constitution.

27 posted on 12/31/2012 1:34:17 PM PST by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: Timber Rattler

This guy taught Constitutional law for 40 years?

No wonder our nation is going down the sh*tter....


28 posted on 12/31/2012 1:54:23 PM PST by Tzimisce (The American Revolution began when the British attempted to disarm the Colonists.)
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To: Timber Rattler

Yes, we need to clear a path for progress by our dear leader! Forward. /s


29 posted on 12/31/2012 2:02:36 PM PST by TADSLOS (I took extra credit at the School of Hard Knocks)
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To: Timber Rattler

Carlos Slim needs to give up on the NYT.


30 posted on 12/31/2012 2:06:22 PM PST by Trailerpark Badass (So?)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Yes, and his reasoning is surprisingly clear in its shoddiness. Usually they do a little wordplay, throw about variegated academic jargon, pile on a few inapt and muddled analogies, etc. But he leaves himself wide open with overly straight talk. Okay, so the House shouldn’t decide, because Republicans run it. Nor the Senate, because it’s been gerrymandered or whatever. Who does that leave? Not the president, surely, elected as he was by the old and therefore evil electoral college system. A national public convention, where citizens and noncitizens, minors and adults alike text their vote like on American Idol? Maybe.

More accurately, it is he whom he would have decide. He doesn’t have patience for anything else.


31 posted on 12/31/2012 2:07:14 PM PST by Tublecane
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To: Nota particle

Much like the “death of the author,” which was merely a pretext for literary critics or whomever to be free to say whatever was on their mind without worrying about pesky details such as what the humans who write books (other books, never so much their own) are trying to say, legal scholars adopt an Anything Goes standard of analysis because they could never love what laws actually say so much as they love the sound of their own voices.


32 posted on 12/31/2012 2:14:12 PM PST by Tublecane
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To: Timber Rattler
The cancer(decay, corruption, apathy, etc.)that has been prevalent in most urban areas in America for decades...is spreading throughout all of America.

The New York Times can take credit for their share of that..."progress".

33 posted on 12/31/2012 2:15:45 PM PST by RckyRaCoCo (I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery, IXNAY THE TSA!)
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To: Brett66

He doesn’t seem to realize how easy it is to flip his argument around. Too easy, almost, to be worth response. It only works if Dead White Males are evil, as he insists. But imagine if evil Living White Males gained control of the presidency and Senate now, and all that stood in the way of overturning the legacy of Dead Rainbow Multigendered progressives were for a lib majority in the House to drag its feet. See how fast he’d dogmatize and demand absolute fealty to the Constitution as interpreted since the New Deal.


34 posted on 12/31/2012 2:23:17 PM PST by Tublecane
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To: Timber Rattler

FROM THE EDITORIAL:

“Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago”

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement , is a political pamphlet written by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin

A more clever Marxist would have been more discreet......


35 posted on 12/31/2012 2:24:47 PM PST by jttpwalsh
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To: haroldeveryman

Actually, I believe the Weimar constitution had a dictator clause, so the Third Reich was perfectly legal, at least at first, though he definitely didn’t hold fair elections to cement hus rule.


36 posted on 12/31/2012 2:27:16 PM PST by Tublecane
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To: Timber Rattler
At first I thought this was satire. It reads like something out of Weimar Germany, circa 1929.

Dictatorship is coming.

37 posted on 12/31/2012 2:31:13 PM PST by Campion ("Social justice" begins in the womb)
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To: Timber Rattler
looks like a lush to me...

38 posted on 12/31/2012 3:39:37 PM PST by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: Timber Rattler

This pesky road map is keeping us from freely traveling off the cliff.

Dangerous Morons are training our kids who end up running what used to be entrepreneurial expressions of capitalism like socialist bureaucracies.

Good Lord.


39 posted on 12/31/2012 3:55:55 PM PST by prov1813man (While the one you despise and ridicule works to protect you, those you embrace work to destroy you)
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To: Timber Rattler
Yes, people have defied the Constitution's written provisions in a "good cause." But how are we to know when to break the rules? This asshole gives us no guidance on that. He only wants to ignore the Constitution to implement his own chosen policies-- how convenient.

Maybe we can ignore the Bill of Rights to arrest this guy for stating his silly opinions, pass a bill of attainder to confiscate his properties, and then hang him for treason even though he has not met the Constitutional definition of treason literally. Why should I let the law and the Constitution stand in the way of protecting my freedoms from punks like this guy?

40 posted on 12/31/2012 4:30:15 PM PST by Lysandru
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