primitives discuss amending the Constitution

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024383450

Oh my.

Skins's island is quite the think-tank.

Donald Ian Rankin (10,377 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 02:34 PM

Five amendments to the US constitution I'd like to see.

1) No official involved in the enforcement of the law, be it as a sheriff, prosecutor, judge or otherwise, shall be appointed by election, or answerable directly or indirectly to anyone who is. All such officials must be appointed by, and answerable to, independent bodies.
 
2) Strip congress of the power to impeach a president "for high crimes and misdemeanours". Have a referendum on the following alternatives

2a) Congress shall have no power to remove a president
2b) Congress shall have the power to remove the president by majority vote, without need for a pretext.
 
3) An armed militia being the greatest possible threat to the security of a free state, the federal and state governments shall have the power to regulate ownership of weapons, and no form of right to keep or bear arms will exist.
 
4) Each state shall receive seats in the house of Representatives according to its population. The vote of each Senator shall carry a weight proportional to the size of the state they represent. The president shall be elected by popular vote (or, if 2b, by vote of Congress).
 
5) Congressional districting shall be the responsibilty of a non-partisan (not bipartisan) independent body. It shall assign districts according to tightly-specified criteria (insert criteria about equal population, roughly circular shape and boundaries following roads, rivers etc here), so as to give it little freedom to gerrymander.

Glorfindel (3,247 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 02:50 PM

1. #4 sounds particularly good.

Each senator from California would have a vote worth 66 votes of a senator from Wyoming. That would go a long way toward democratizing the US Senate, which is currently less democratic than the UK's House of Lords.

Duckhunter935 (2,335 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 03:16 PM

2. disagree

Large states already have the house by population. Senate is equal for all states large and small.

Donald Ian Rankin (10,377 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 03:21 PM

4. Why is a mixture of fair and unfair representation better than fair throughout?

It really is as simple as "fair" vs "unfair" - there is no remotely sane reason why someone living in a region where the state lines have been drawn closer together should have more power than someone living where they are further apart.

Nuclear Unicorn (9,926 posts)    Sat Jan 25, 2014, 07:49 AM

22. Then break-up larger states like CA, FL and NY

Glassunion (5,942 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 04:06 PM

12. Why not just kick Wyoming out of the Union?

Their vote would no longer carry any weight, so why bother allowing them to vote at all.

Donald Ian Rankin (10,377 posts)    Sat Jan 25, 2014, 07:53 AM

23. Why bother allowing people from Las Vegas to vote at all?

There are the same number of them as there are people from Wyoming, so their votes should carry the same amount of weight.

badtoworse (4,168 posts)   Fri Jan 24, 2014, 03:19 PM

3. No. 5 is OK in principle, but how to obtain a non-partisan, independent body...

...and who gets to decide who's on it? I would strongly oppose the first four.

Logical (11,271 posts)   Fri Jan 24, 2014, 03:23 PM

7. What's wrong with 1?

geek tragedy (35,267 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 04:10 PM

13. it's factually impossible. it would mean that cops and prosecutors wouldn't be accountable to anyone.

But, who would hire them? If no elected officials had any authority over them, who would be responsible for their conduct?

FarCenter (16,221 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 03:37 PM

9. Re 5) -- if you can't gerrymander, you can't create black or hispanic districts

Part of the reason for getting away from compact, roughly circular districts was to provide a means for ensuring minority representation. Of course, once you relax constraints, all sorts of other games become possible.

jmowreader (26,377 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 03:53 PM

11. Some good, some bad

Number one sounds pretty good, except who'd choose the independent bodies?

Number two needs some work. We obviously need a way to get rid of a Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. How about this: the president can be removed by a Vote of No Confidence presented to the American people. A group wishing to remove the president must submit a Filing Fee in the amount of one hundred million dollars. Upon acceptance, the group will have eight weeks to sell their position to the American people. On the Tuesday of the eighth week, a national vote will be conducted. If at least 60 percent of all registered voters in the United States cast ballots in this election and at least 67.0 percent of those voters vote in favor of removing the president, the Filing Fee will be returned and the president and his entire administration will be removed from office, to be replaced by the Speaker of the House in a caretaker role only (he'll only be able to sign funding bills that maintain the government at its present level and may not pass or repeal laws or alter the tax structure) until a full presidential election can be conducted. If both voter thresholds are not met, the Filing Fee will be used to pay accountants to calculate the total cost of the Vote of No Confidence, and the group will pay the full cost of conducting it.
 
Number three...are you thinking something on the order of what Australia and Israel have done? If you can pull it off, it sounds promising.
 
Number four: You described how the House is already structured. Not sure if I like the idea of one senator having the ability to cast multiple votes; do you really want Ted Cruz to have 35 times the power of Bernie Sanders? How about this: sort the states according to population. States 31 through 50 keep two senators. States 21 through 30 get three, states 11 through 20 get four and states 1 through 10 get five. Directly electing the president is good.
 
Number five: There is one way to get rid of gerrymandering, and that's to make it not worth people's while to do it. And frankly, the only way to do THAT is to have a congressman elected by more than one district's residents. In states with five or fewer districts, make them all statewide offices. With more than five, have the congressman's own district plus the four closest to it vote on that congressman. I can also see the House and Senate leadership being nationally elected offices, but am not sure how you'd squeeze it in.

geek tragedy (35,267 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 04:14 PM

14. 1 is factually impossible--it's literally impossible

that cops and judges and prosecutors would not in any way be accountable or under the authority of the democratically elected government. Unless you think the UN should invade us and appoint every cop, prosecutor, and judge.
 
2 is also foolhardy in either instance--either the president has absolute power or you give Congress the right to overrule the presidential election on a whim.
 
3-fine with that

4--why not just go unicameral? having weighted averages for Senate is hyper-convoluted.
 
5) there is no such thing as a non-partisan body when it comes to politics and power.

Lost_Count (104 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 08:44 PM

16. As long as we are going full looney tunes...

... You should write in ice cream Tuesday for the masses!

Captain Stern (412 posts)    Fri Jan 24, 2014, 09:06 PM

18. Thanks for the thought provoking list.

My two cents on each of them:

1) I don't like it. You're saying that none of those folks should be selected democratically, but that they should be selected by 'independent bodies'. Who selects the folks that are on members of the 'independent bodies'? I think we'd end up with the same problems.
 
2) You're amendment makes it really easy to remove a President, or impossible to remove a President. Neither one of those options is good. Maybe it would be better to just say congress can remove a sitting President, but clarify the reasons why.
 
3)I think you're essentially saying repeal the 2cnd amendment, and replacing it with it's opposite. I'm ok with that. It doesn't allow the federal government to guarantee or ban gun ownership, but it allows the individual states to. I think that works.
 
4) I'm against that. That amendment would essentially turn the Senate into the House. At that point, why have both?
 
5) It isn't legally practical, but I'm totally on board in principal. The political party that happens to be in power at the time shouldn't be able to control redistricting, regardless of which party is in power.

[Big Dog]

One step closer to that fateful day when two words will resound across our great country.

"Fix bayonets."

[Skul]

I've got a better one.

Open season on libtards. No bag limit.

[franksolich]

One step closer to that fateful day when two words will resound across our great country.

"Fix bayonets."

You're probably right.

[Carl]

It is pretty amazing that the Founding Fathers could look 220 years into the future and see DUmmies and know what to protect the country from.

Here is a clue DUmbasses...all those inconvenient things you wail about were designed to prevent the heavy handed tyranny you long for and is always the end game of leftism.

[DUmpsterDiver]

These DMFs want the city misfits to run the country.  They can just move back overseas to get the same effect.

[Freeper]

Wow number three is very telling of just how backwards these people think. Instead of being concerned for the security and liberty of the people they want the state to be secure from the people. There was a reason he constitution limited the government and not the people and these idiots will happily reverse it and make us the servants to the government instead of the government being the servants of the people.

[USA4ME]

Here's a Master of the Obvious statement:

Ever notice how any proposed amendments to the Constitution from the island always favor liberal/progressive ideology?

Liberals are already crapping on the Constitution as it is. Maybe they want to change it so they don't "feel" so bad about their misuse. It is all about "feelings" with them, we know that.

.

[BadCat]

One step closer to that fateful day when two words will resound across our great country.

"Fix bayonets."

That OP just inspired me to go out and buy another 1000 rounds of .223.

[Carl]

It always amuses me that they think they could institute oppressive policies and all things would continue as before with just them benefiting.

Right now there is an exodus from the high tax,expensive and often miserable weather of the northeast.
Imagine if what they wish for was true and the conservatives of that region accelerated that.
Soon NY would be on an equal footing with the southern and more populated states so the benefits would be nil.

Of course leftists could always build a wall around their communist hell holes to keep people in.
Oh heck who ever could imagine the left doing something like that?

[FlaGator]

I have always believed that the Senate should go back to being seats appointed by each state. As I understand things the original intent of congress was that the House represented the people and the Senate represented the state. The House voted in the people's desires and the Senate voted the States' desires.

Also, I feel pretty confident when I say that there is no way the OP would have suggested the elimination of the Impeachment process if there were a conservative in office.

[HawkHogan]

I have always believed that the Senate should go back to being seats appointed by each state. As I understand things the original intent of congress was that the House represented the people and the Senate represented the state. The House voted in the people's desires and the Senate voted the States' desires.

Also, I feel pretty confident when I say that there is no way the OP would have suggested the elimination of the Impeachment process if there were a conservative in office.

I wish they would repeal the 17th Amendment as well..

As for the original post, once again a Dummy demonstrates that they haven't the slightest idea about civics.  Everything he suggests is preposterous.  He basically wants to establish a tyrannical state, where the executive can't be checked, and the whole country is slave to the whims of high population centers.  Why would anyone agree to be in such a union?    How would any of the less populated states benefit from the union if they had absolutely no say in the national government? 

As for the repeal of the Second Amendment, come and get them Dummy. 

[DumbAss Tanker]

Five stupid ideas, concocted by clueless spoiled children with no comprehension of the reasons, rationale, and history behind the rules formulated by their intellectual superiors so long ago.

[Carl]

Five stupid ideas, concocted by clueless spoiled children with no comprehension of the reasons, rationale, and history behind the rules formulated by their intellectual superiors so long ago.

I can`t imagine any better way of saying it then that...H5

[DefiantSix]

I can`t imagine any better way of saying it then that...H5

+1. Would that make it Hi-6 or Hi-10?

[DumbAss Tanker]

I must confess to also being a bit unclear on the fourth branch of government necessarily implicit in items 1, 2, and 5; the one that would supposedly oversee all law enforcement officials, hold the President accountable, and handle all redistricting.  Does this mean Asgaard, Olympus, or the Justice League?

 

[JohnnyReb]

That OP just inspired me to go out and buy another 1000 rounds of .223.

Me....1,000 of 762 X 39 JHP ....what should I buy next time?

....and BTW, those are the Dumbest amendments evah.

Those stupid MFs are so stupid I bet if the government they so desired mailed them shackles and chains they would put them on with no coercion.

[BlueStateSaint]

Me....1,000 of 762 X 39 JHP ....what should I buy next time?

I'm currently into buying buckshot.  00 Buck.

[BattleHymn]

The Donald primitive, along with his amendment toadies, need to decide of they are willing to die for their ideals. 

[FlaGator]

Let's take a look at putting those changes in to practice. A republican President wins election. The first thing he does is make illegal for any non-sanctioned individual to own a weapon then sanctions all registered republican and conservatives to own weapons. Guns are then taken from the dems and liberals and redistributed to conservatives who don't currently own guns. He then invokes an executive order to make this a permanent change unalterable by congress or another executive order.

The President then points out to screaming liberals the following and that they chose to enact 2a.

2) Strip congress of the power to impeach a president "for high crimes and misdemeanours". Have a referendum on the following alternatives

2a) Congress shall have no power to remove a president
2b) Congress shall have the power to remove the president by majority vote, without need for a pretext.

[txradioguy]

This DUmmie wants to install a dictator for life.

[JohnnyReb]

This DUmmie wants to install a dictator for life.

Namely, Obama.

[txradioguy]

Namely, Obama.

Exactly.  They want to give him more than just the power of a pen and a phone.

[BadCat]

I'm currently into buying buckshot.  00 Buck.

I have a couple thousand rounds of that, and a Benelli M4, Benelli Nova and Rem 870 to deliver them

[miskie]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  Tell ya what DUmmies, Why don't you geniuses figure out how to get two thirds of the states to vote for that crap sandwich first ?