Posted on 03/14/2015 8:43:48 AM PDT by Strawberry AZ
Good post!
Congress has no more authority to modify or boot the powers loaned to it than a lawyer may assign a Power of Attorney.
I think that the constitutional republic needs to lose the idea of electing federal senators by either state lawmakers or general voters. State lawmakers need to take turns filling federal senate seats for their states.
While the states would have to keep their federal senate seats filled to comply with the Constitution’s Article V requirement of equal representation in the Senate, disgruntled voters would conceptually be able to use state recall laws to recall their federal senators, vacant federal senate seats filled simply by rotating in the next batch of state lawmakers.
<>State lawmakers need to take turns filling federal senate seats for their states.<>
Run with that idea. Elaborate into a stand alone vanity. Be sure to ping me when you do.
That will almost certainly be on the Article V agenda if it ever gets off the ground.
I should have included a “master reset” provision with respect to state lawmakers being rotated into federal Senate seats. In other words, in addition to state voters (state lawmakers?) possibly recalling bad-apple Senators, maybe a provision to allow 2/3 majority of states to remove a given federal senator.
Note that the states would be more closely involved with putting new justices on the Supreme Court with the “rotation” system. Letting the feds approve of justices is arguably the biggest mistake in the Constitution. And the ill-conceived 17th Amendment is always at the scene of Senate problems.
Again, the only reason that people are interested in controlling the federal government is because of the tsunami of unconstitutional federal taxes now going through DC.
I ran across this one back in the Eighties when it was called the Utah Option. (I have no idea how it may be related to the state of Utah.)
The idea was that if the legislatures of two-thirds of the states voted a Resolution of No-Confidence in the federal government, that federal government is dissolved. New elections would be called within 60 days for President, Vice-President, the House and all Senate seats regardless of two-year class. (This presupposes that the 17th Amendment is not repealed. If it is repealed, the states would replace all senators in whatever mode they saw fit.) There would be a Dracula Clause forbidding any member of the old government from serving in the new government.
Following the election, all federal judges would be fired and replaced by the new administration. All term and civil service protection would be revoked for all bureaucrats from the old administration.
This would be the ultimate reboot button short of revolution.
Putting on the tin foil hat, I trust that the Article V agenda is not being staged by Progressive Movement operatives who abort the mission at their convenience.
You should look into the Citizens for Self Governance, the group at the hear of this effort, and their Convention of States tab. They’re bona-fide freedom-loving American and the effort is a sincere one.
Would that would make the House closer to a parliamentary style body? If we raised the cap to, say, 600, that would be one Representative per roughly 515,000 people. Would that possibly be too many to divide roughly equally between two major parties? Would smaller caucuses emerge with more clout in numbers based on alliances that one not necessarily party-based?
That would force coalitions to emerge to select the Speaker. And the Speaker *should* drive the interests of the coalition that selected him (unlike today).
Then there is the Senate. It would still be capped at 100, and the two leading parties will still run it. They would be truly forced to deal with the House, because the House would likely not be run by party cronies like it is today, where both chambers act as essentially one body.
Then there is the Electoral College, which would grow to 700, which means that the President will need to get 351 electoral votes to win. The disbursement of those 600 district votes across the states will change what we think of as battleground states.
This is all perfectly doable without changing the Constitution.
Thoughts?
-PJ
I was a member of the JBS from 1977 to 1981 and I have no use for it.
Any "original interpretation" that would exclude their interpretation of the Constitution is probably not very "originalist."
The first advantage would be local control. A congressman would have daily access to his 30,000 constituents and would hear them clearly without the current massive filtering via his staff.
The second advantage would be the disappearance of K Street. The locus of corruption would move from the District of Columbia to the 10,000 or so congressional districts. That many congressmen is far too many to bribe or pay off efficiently. It would reduce the influence of big money on the electoral process.
The third advantage would be national security. A nuclear device detonated over Washington would have no effect on the House, which would continue to do business on one or more secure servers while the remainder of the government recovered from the attempted decapitation.
This would be a good way of entering the 21st Century in terms of technology.
Interesting idea about a virtual House. The 30,000 per Representative was a minimum. At that number, you would have over 10,000 Representatives. Even if the ratio were 100,000:1, that would be just under 3,100 Representatives.
You would still have a physical Senate? I suggested a few essays ago that the Senate should be thought of as more of a gathering of state ambassadors to a United States (without the Security Council of controlling states). Let them gather and agree on mutually beneficial interests.
It would be an interesting new dynamic to have a virtual House and a physical Senate.
-PJ
This is it exactly.
The conspiracy theory the Society promotes is a theory held, aside from the JBS, by explicitly anti-Semitic people/organizations. This may sound on the surface like the Birchers are nice folks because they're the only conspiracists who aren't officially and openly anti-Semitic. But what it really means is that anyone who joins them enters a world made up almost entirely of anti-Semites. Every organization, every publication will encounter from that point onward will be explicitly anti-Semitic (the JBS alone excepted). Often the member draws the obvious conclusion and simply joins the anti-Semites. This is why I often call the JBS the "blue lodge" of the anti-Semitic movement in the United States.
The Birch Society has also promoted and praised anti-Semites as "anti-conspiracy" heroes (Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh) and published works by other anti-Semites (Nesta Webster, Prince Michel Sturdza). Is it any wonder that so many Birchers wind up as full-throttle Jew-haters? (And yes, I know they have Jewish members.)
Even Willis Carto and Ben Klassen (a fanatical atheist whose blasphemous writings may be found online) started out as John Birchers. Revilo P. Oliver was one of the eleven men present at the meeting where Robert H.W. Welch Jr. founded the John Birch Society.
Nowadays the formerly military-supporting JBS has turned into raging pacifists who refer to traditonalist Americans as "red state fascists." Apparently after the fall of Communism they regard all American military action as benefiting Jews and Israel.
These are not nice people. Stay as far away from them as possible. Believe me . . . I used to think they were wonderful! Were it not for my fanatical pro-Jewish religious beliefs they might have turned me into an anti-Semite too (G-d forbid!). But instead when I saw what they were I got out.
Also, "interdiction" calls to mind young Federalist Daniel Webster and his opposition to a military draft in the War of 1812. Daniel Webster is a much more preferable role model than John C. Calhoun.
You have the kernel. I hope you develop it in a stand alone vanity.
After repeal of the 17A, a virtual senate that features senators with offices adjacent to state legislative chambers is worth considering.
Still, legislatures are personal in nature, so I’m not sold on a entirely virtual congress, but certainly look forward to your ideas.
James Madison used the term “interposition” in the Virginia Resolution opposing the Alien and Sedition Acts.
A virtual Senate with senators' offices in the state legislatures would make sense. The repeal of the 17th Amendment could also end the six-year term of senators and make them "at will" employees of their respective legislatures. If there is a party change in the state legislature, the new legislature would be able to change their senators as befits a change of state policy toward the federal entity.
A total virtual Congress would solve a lot of problems of a very large country.
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