this person to determine what the Constitution means.
I prefer that
that this guy gets to have the final word.
Posted on 08/30/2002 5:32:48 AM PDT by Bigun
I fully realize that yours is the winning hand in this discussion and that we will continue playing Russian Roulette with our futures based on the best 5 out of 9 but be assured that I at least know that it was NOT supposed to be that way and don't feel to protected by it.
If you call this FUN I take back my statement, made at lunch today, that you seem perfectly normal even though you were born in California! ;-)
And that small percentage of moral people are critical to winning an election, yet have no voice or numbers enough to mount a recall when an elected offical renigs on his campaign promises.
How many "Contracts with America" have there been? No there has to be another way, a way with the force of law, to hold a politicians feet to the fire. When a national party decides it's platform a contract must be signed and agreed to. If the politician renigs he is subject to removal, even if only five people drag him before the court.
This committee would have to have more power than the Supreme Court. Even the Court would be subject to the committee. Or disagreements would have to be placed on a national ballot for an up or down vote by the citizens.
We have just such a committee already! It's called the United States House of Represenatives. It isn't picked at random -- perhaps it would be better if it were -- and they serve for two years rather than one, but they have ALL the power they need to do whatever needs doing!
The can, and recently did, impeach the president for goodness sake!
They have the power to remove ANY federal judge for "bad behavior" and they have the power to determine just what "bad behavior" means. Problem is that most of them are not LEADERS they are followers afraid of their own shadows. Not without justification, some of them have become disheartened with doing such things however because of a STUPID electorate!
Did you know that there is currently a member of the Congress who is a former federal judge? Yep, he was a federal judge until he got IMPEACHED whereupon he went back to Florida, ran for congress, and the STUPID electorate voted him in! His name is Alcee Hastings and you saw him all over the television during the "proceedings" down there last election!
Sorta makes ya SICK don't it? Does me!
"A people may want a free government, but if, from insolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by monetary discouragement or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all of these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty; and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely to long enjoy it."
John Stuart Mill Essay on Representative Government
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
Well, at least that is what they intended!
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
Justice Brandeis USSC
Without fear of punishment or loss, politicians are pretty free to step on the Constitution.
I prefer that
that this guy gets to have the final word.
How about lead teeth? We have the 2nd amendment for that very purpose, but the citizens are too cowardly to use it...so far.
The last peaceful protection against constitutional violation is the right of the jury to use its own sense of justice to nullify bad law.
You will find that provision later down in the Texas platform. It is also in the Libertarian platform.
So the protections that are built into the constitution against tyranny number four boxes, to be used in this order.
The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box and the ammo box. Before we must use our second amendment rights to have a violent revolution, we should be using our sixth amendment rights to stop the grave injustices that happen everyday.
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