Constitution 101 For Disgruntled Lefties

[eyesroll]

(cross-posted from www.wisconsinite.net/dairyconspiracy)

As you've no doubt heard, we have ourselves another SCOTUS nominee, one Harriet Miers. It seems a lot of people are angry about this -- DUers don't like that she's a Bush crony with no experience; FReepers don't like that she's possibly not a wingnut's wingnut, with no experience.

Right now, I'm not going to address Miers directly (I'll wait for the hearings -- my reaction to the announcement this morning was "who?"), nor am I going to address the FReepers' concerns (aside from a possible "Neener! Neener! Neener!"). No, today I'm going to try to correct the absolute mangling of the Consitution I've seen recently, by people on my own side.

1. "Should" does not matter in Constitutional politics. It doesn't matter if we the people "should" be able to throw out a politician for...anything, really. The Constitution says we can't (although we can petition our Representatives to do it).

2. Whether we believe, or not, that George W. Bush was duly elected without fraud in 2000 or 2004, he is the President of the United States, as voted by the Electoral College in January 2001 and 2005, respectively. Finding evidence of fraud -- even fraud in which GWB was complicit -- does not overturn the results of the Electoral College vote. We have no right of direct election of the President. Sorry.

3. The impeachment process is something people on my side get wrong ALL THE TIME, even if they should have learned it in eighth grade. A President, as well as some other politicians, can be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. So far, two Presidents have been impeached -- Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Wait...Bill Clinton was impeached? But he stayed in office! How soon we forget. "Impeachment" does not mean he was removed from office; it means he was sent to the Senate for a trial, over which the Chief Justice of the United States presides. He was aquitted. (So was Johnson.) For the record, Nixon was never impeached; he resigned before it could happen.

Further, the Senate does not have power of impeachment, nor does the SCOTUS. For those of us living in fantasy land, the House does have the power of impeachment, although this Republican-led House is not bloody likely to exercise it on a Republican President, or on:

4. His judicial nominees. If for some reason a President leaves office in disgrace, whether through conviction or resignation, his nominees don't leave with him. I've seen more than one post on DU saying we should (there's that word again) impeach Bush and then throw Roberts and Miers out with him, because they were nominated under an illegitimate administration. (Yes, I've seen things saying we should throw Miers out, even though she hasn't even begun the confirmation process.)

Sorry, it doesn't happen. And we can't hold protests demanding it happen. Well, we can hold protests demanding whatever the hell we want (that's in the Constitution, too!) but we won't get results. We'd have to impeach Roberts (and O'Connor's eventual replacement) separately. And that's not going to happen, and really, there are no grounds.

I swear, this ignorance and sometimes stupidity has catalyzed my recent interest in Constitutional law (cough). It's one thing not to remember just which Amendment repealed Prohibition; it's another thing to get big swaths of the American foundation wrong entirely.

We can try to get our Representatives to vote the way we want them to, or we can try to get new ones during the next election. We can try to amend the Constitution if we want some of the "shoulds" to become "shalls." But for now -- that's the way it is, and no amount of holding your breath and stomping and kicking is going to change the rules, no matter how much you want it to.

[mestup]

1. uh, but I was learning the importance of dissecting frogs...

Thanks for your post! I wish our educational system (during my time at least) would have engaged us more about the technicalities of the Constitution.

[eyesroll]

2. I hear you...

We took "Constitution tests" that were more concerned with which amendment said what, and which parts were written when, than with what the body proper and the amendments actually meant.

[fudge stripe cookays]

25. How the heck was I supposed to learn anything GOOD about government?

I was taught by this asshole:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/mag/bestworst.php

Scroll down to "Best Worst Legislators 1997" Now find #9 on the WORST list, John Shields.

More info (do page searches):
http://www.tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=615&pubid=366

Most sickening of all, he's in the pocket of Leininger, right wing dick, extraordinaire:
http://www.tfn.org/religiousright/leininger/

Is it any wonder I wanted nothing to do with government for years? He made the class so unbelieveably boring, I just DIDN'T CARE. And now that I know more about him, I'm even more disgusted at myself for not getting involved sooner.

I do feel a deep sense of satisfaction now that I did my senior paper in his class (had to be a bio of a Texas politician) on Ann Richards!

He he.
FSC

[DebJ]

45. 'made it so boring we didn't care'...likely he met his goals, then

keeping people away and disinterested.

[fudge stripe cookays]

48. See?

Don't want to be breeding any young liberals. And if we need conservatives, we can just recruit them from the country club while they're sitting down for steak dinner with dad.

GOD I wish I could have stayed in school in Austin. Didn't have much choice in the matter though.

FSC

[msmcghee]

10. There's absolutely no excuse . .

. . in this day and age for not understanding what the Constitution actually says and how it works if we want to make comments about it in the context of today's politics. Don't blame it on what you did or did not learn in school.

If we care enough to understand it we can learn all we want in an evening sitting at our computer.

Usually though, ranting is what we are after. That's what I'm doing now.

I read post after post here at DU about how the freepers are dumb and ignorant and have no education - unlike us wise liberals. Hah! We all operate primarily from the emotions generated from our worldview. We just have an opposite worldview from them. Our's seems so right to us - just like their's does for them.

We all use our brains to justify what we already believe is true. We almost never use our brains to figure out what is true to start with.

I'm just as guilty as anyone. We can all do better.

[Zuni]

16. wow. bloody good post

you hit the nail on the head :applause:

[mestup]

18. This sounds like "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" nonsense!

We have every right to blame an educational system that practically ENCOURAGES students to be ignorant of civic duty and public affairs.

[Zuni]

21. if you make no effort to learn

then you are part of the problem

[Kenroy]

27. Agreed

the constitution is not a long document, nor is it very complicated. A short book that can be read in an afternoon can give anyone ALL the basic information they need.

Spend a week, and you can read an in-depth book that goes into much more detail. There's no excuse for not knowing this stuff.

[Zuni]

28. if you have the internet

you can look up not just the text of the constitution, but a huge collection of articles about interpretations, judicial theory and other info

likewise, probably almost every public library has at least a few books on the constitution, constitutional history and/or the supreme court

[mestup]

46. wtf? Then why not just abolish public education altogether..

..and just let people learn on their own.

Jeez! Why is everyone missing the point here? Taxpayer funded public education should include a heavy emphasis on government and civics. It should prepare students to be effective citizens.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

55. You're right, but you're also wrong.

With everything else, you'd be 100% correct. However, when it comes to government and politics, there is little to no excuse for ignorance. Each and every person is a part of this world and should know what is going on around them. Every citizen has a responsibility, come hell or high water, to learn about their own government. The government is the people. If the people are ignorant, so too will be the government.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. Nominated. Excellent post. Thank you.

[eyesroll]

6. Thanks!

I just took my LSAT, and I'm hoping I did well enough to get in to the local law school. I plan to study Public Law, which has a heavy dose of Constitutional Law thrown in.

[sdfernando]

4. I remember stating before, someplace...

I remember stating before, someplace, not sure if it was here at DU or someplace else, but it was about the 2000 election. People were debating the legality of the election and the SCOTUS ruling. My take on it was a little different than I'd been hearing from others. Basically my thought was this: If SCOTUS had not decided in favor of Bush, the result would have been the same anyway and here is why. If the election results in Florida could not be certified by a certain date then in order not to lose electoral votes the state legislature would have the duty of selecting the voters for the Electoral College. Since the Florida legislature was/is majority republican the votes would have gone to bush anyway. He still would have won Florida and the presidency.

I’m not completely clear on how individual states handle such issues, but I believe they all have some mechanism for selecting their Electoral College voters when election results are in jeopardy.

Edited for spelling

[Kenroy]

12. Yes, you're right

regardless of what the Supreme court did in 2000, the Florida legislature would've sent a slate of Bush electors to the electoral college.

Similarly, people seem very upset that nobody in the Senate contested the electors. If they had, the election would've been tossed to the House, where... guess what? The Republican majority would've elected Bush anyway - and he would've been been MORE legitimate.

Like it or not, the fix was in, and nothing was going to change the outcome in 2000.

[crispini]

31. re: nobody in the Senate contesting the electors....

I think people are mad about that because of the scene in F911 where the Congressional Black Caucus asked for someone and didn't get it. Sometimes it's important to fight just because it feels right. As we saw this last election, of course, we had a Senator to contest -- and it didn't make any difference.

[Kenroy]

32. I know people are upset by that

and I maintain it's for bad reasons.

Clearly Al Gore did not WANT anybody to contest. If he had, there would've been a contest. But the point is, if there HAD BEEN a contest, it would've been fruitless, and would, in fact, have made Bush even MORE legitimate.

[nvliberal]

44. What really burns me up is the attitude of Michael Moore,

who in Fahrenheit 9/11 employed the Greenie cliche that Gore wussed out, and the Democrats were a bunch of wusses because they didn't challenge the seating of the electors.

Guess what? What good would it have done to tie Congress up? The election would have gone to the House. The House, Republican-dominated, would have put Bush in anyway, and not only that, but had the Senate, which I believe would have voted on the installation of the vice-president, voted, both Gore and Lieberman would have been forced to recuse themselves from voting because of an obvious conflict of interest.

And the result would have been Cheney for vice president anyway, even though he's the real president.

THAT'S what's left out of the mindless revisionism by Moore and his ilk.

I was FURIOUS when he pulled that lie of the spineless Democrats in F 9/11.

[zanne]

57. That's "kind of" correct....

The Republican State Legislature in Florida decided way in advance that they would elect their own electors to the Electoral College, NOT because of DEALINE, but because they simply wanted to! The individual electors do decide, ultimately, who they will vote for in the college; they can go against the popular vote if they want to. What I'm trying to point out is that the Florida Legislature was going to REPLACE the appointed electors against the wishes of the voters themselves.

[napi21]

5. Thanks eyesroll. This needs to be posted once a week, at least!

I know how tempting it is to dream of the "should ideas"! I dream a lot myself! I think many people really believe Shrub CAN be inpeached for the many wrongs he has done BECAUSE the Pubs impeached Clinton for what we view as a morality charge that didn't hurt or kill ANYBODY!

I'm gotten beat up pretty hard here on DU for trying to explain just how futile fighting for impeachment of a Pub President and a Pub house really is!

I actually think the folks here on DU already know the info you posted, but don't want to face it or believe it.

You need to repost this info, once a week at least, just as a reality check to bring everybody back to the real world.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

7. Can we just sticky this to the top of GD and GD: Politics?

Please??

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

52. And maybe the Election Results forum, too.

In 100 point boldface, underlined, italicised, with <blinky> tags.

[tavalon]

8. Thanks for the synopsis

needed greatly here. I nominated this because more people need to see it.

[Missy M]

9. Thank you for this most important post....

another point we have to remember is a sitting president nominates a person of their choice to the Supreme Court when an opening occurs. If a Democrat were now president he/she would be doing the nominating and the Republicans would be opposing that choice just the way we are. It is the way our system works, right or wrong. It should work to even out the Supreme Court but I'm not sure it always does.

[Dem Agog]

11. Always good to get a refresher course in REAL US law...

I always get annoyed at people who scream they have a right to "free speech" when an admin removes their posts... Utter ignorance. No free speech on someone else's servers...

Or in a lot of other place for that matter...


Good stuff, thanks for the post.

[LSK]

13. care to comment about Judicial Actvisim vs SCOTUS role?

Seems to me that a lot of people are throwing around the terms "judicial activism" and legislating from the bench, but I thought the SCOTUS role was to determine which laws are Constitutional or not. Care to comment on this?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

14. The Constitution has never clearly defined SCOTUS' role.

Remember Marbury v. Madison?

[Zuni]

20. there are two schools of thought in general on Constitutional

First off, Judicial Activism, as defined by conservatives, is using Judicial Review to (most commonly) over turn laws or nullify acts of Congress.

The two major schools of thought in Constitutional interpretation are "originalism", which is what the majority of RWers want and "pragmatism" which uses evolving standards to interpret the intentionally vague constitution. For all their hype, most of the founding fathers were not in favor of future generations using "originalism", or basing their decisions on the way Judges would have ruled in 1790, based on an extremely strict interpretation of the constitution. The founding fathers, for the most part, left alot of the constitution vague, because most of them wanted future generations to be able to evolve interpretation standards based on the times and for unforseen situations. For example, the 8th Amendment does not spell out what cruel and unusual punishment is---it was left for later generations to interpret what was "cruel and unusual" by their standards---hence the much needed ruling preventing the execution of minors.

[Czolgosz]

36. Actually, "originalism" is rarely anything more than a proffered

justification for striking down evolutionary changes in the law.

Why is this so? Because the "original" intent of the Constitution's framers is impossible to know for several reasons, such as: (1) the Constitution was drafted by committee and it is factually inaccurate to assume that each framer had the same intent or that there was one consensus intent, (2) the Constitution is little more than an outline and it provides too little detail to guide all aspects of the law, (3) society has evolved in ways that the founders couldn't possibly imagine or full appreciate even if they did imagine them and so they offer little guidance in such matters, and (4) in some regards (e.g., slavery, gender equality, voting rights, etc.) the intent of the founders is now considered morally flawed and so knowledge of the original intent -- if you could know it -- would not aid you in the judicial process.

Since the framers' original intent is unknowable (and would not be useful in some regards if even it was knowable, such as in questions of racial equality), those judges who make a pretense of "knowing" the framers' "original intent" are simply applying their own judicial Rorschach test and seeing whatever they want to see. Moreover, even those judges who purport to be followers of original intent make no pretense of following such original intent in any number of cases where a fair guess at original intent would not support their other judicial goals.

Any judge who tells you he or she knows the one true original intent of all framers and that he or she will faithfully apply that intent is selling something (and it's probably your rights to the highest corporate bidder).

[Bacchus39]

39. Marbury wasn't in the Constitution

the SC declared themselves to be the ones who determine whether or not a law is Constitutional.

[Zuni]

41. that was his point

it was a ruling that expanded the court's powers

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

51. Thanks, Sherlock Holmes.

That was my point.

[Czolgosz]

22. Judicial activism manifests itself by a judge's overeagerness to disregard

the people's will as expressed by their legislatures, the people's will as expressed by juries, the traditional role of stare decisis and respect for precedential decisions decided by other courts in the past, and the proper role of lower courts' decisions within the discretion granted to them.

I don't see how anyone could say Miers is a judicial activist unless some new and dramatic information comes to light. Conversely, I don't see how anyone could read Roberts's judicial decisions and his papers without concluding that he is an enthusiastic judicial activist.

[Zuni]

29. but Judicial Review is a long time precedent

first invoked by Chief Justice Marshall in 1804. The striking down of laws if they violate the constitution, has been one of the court's roles for over 200 years now.

[unblock]

34. actually, marbury v. madison was in 1803 (picky, picky, picky)

[Zuni]

40. eeek

thanks for correcting me

:blush:

[Czolgosz]

42. Chief Justice Roberts has presented us with an excellent example of how a

judicial activism and the courts' role in passing on the constitutionality of the laws interacts.

The Constitution grants Congress the power, broadly, to regulate all facets of interstate commerce. This constitutional provision is generally known as the commerce clause. Back in the 1930, there was a vigorous debate about the scope of the commerce clause and, thus, the scope of congressional authority to pass governmental reforms and regulations as it directly affected intrastate business which might in turn indirectly affect interstate commerce. The debate about the meaning and scope of the commerce clause was a proper exercise of the Supreme Court's authority to interpret the constitutionality of Congress's various acts. Thankfully, this issue has been resolved over 60 years ago in favor of a broad interpretation of congressional authority and this has lead to the congressional authority to pass broad labor reforms, voting rights, equality laws, environmental regulations, and a thousand other things which our government has done right.

Fast forward sixty-odd years. The notoriously conservative DC Circuit Court of Appeals is considering a little case involving the Endangered Species Act and the intrastate habitat of an endangered frog. This very conservative court has no problem with the case, but a young ideologue judge who's barely been on the court for more than a year has a different view than all his conservative and moderate colleagues. This young judge believes that congress doesn't have the authority to enforce the Endangered Species Act in this matter because the endangered frog's habitat is not mapped to cross any state lines. in effect, this young judge would ignore over 60 years of law regarding the commerce clause because he wants to go back to re-debate the 1930s controversy regarding the scope of the commerce clause because a peculiarly narrow view of the commerce clause would suit his corporatist ideology. That is judicial activism. That is just one of the reasons why Roberts never should have been confirmed.

[Yupster]

37. My take on judicial activism

A court has the right to rule a law unconstitutional. They may be right or wrong in my opinion, but that is their right.

However, a court does not have the right to write a law. That is judicial activism.

For example, a court could rule a state's legislative districts to be unconstitutional. However, if the court then presents its own map, in my opinion, they are writing a law, which is not the role of the judiciary. They are taking the legislature's job.

This comes up in many different areas.

[prolesunited]

15. Great post!

You should be a lawyer or something. :thumbsup:

[shockingelk]

17. Two corrections ...

- The Chief Justice only presides over Senate impeachment hearings if it's the POTUS that's been impeached.

- The Senate can expel a member without the help of the House (and vice versa). It just needs a 2/3rds vote.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html#section3

[eyesroll]

23. Thanks for the clarification.

I didn't specifically address Senate/House removal of its own members -- I'm glad you did.

[cantstandbush]

58. Gosh, I learned all this in the 6th grade "Civics Class." You mean

of DU doesn't know these things? I am shocked. Thanks for the post. It might help is we DUers read the Constitution every once in a while.

[Czolgosz]

19. Which is the more forgivable mistake about the US Constitution?

The errors in constitutional analysis you see here or Karen Hughes, acting in her official capacity as representative of our nation, falsely telling her audience in the Middle East "that our Constitution cites 'one nation under God'."

Specifically, at the latest stop on her disasterous tour of the Middle East, Hughes (Bush-appointee without any qualifications for her job number 9,657 and counting) answered an Egyptian leader who asked why Bush frequently mentions God in his speeches. Hughes asked him whether he was aware that "previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our constitution cites 'one nation under God'."

"Well, never mind," he said.


Here's some interesting analysis from Sidney Blumenthal:

With these well-meaning arguments, Hughes has provided the exact proofs for Bin Laden's claims about American motives. "It is stunning to the extent Hughes is helping bin Laden," says Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist who has conducted extensive research into the motives of suicide terrorists and is the author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. "If you set out to help bin Laden," he says, "you could not have done it better than Hughes."
...
"If you read Osama's speeches, they begin with descriptions of the US occupation of the Arabian peninsula driven by our religious goals and that it is our religious purpose that must be confronted. That argument is incredibly powerful, not only to religious Muslims but also secular Muslims. Everything Hughes says makes their case."

The undersecretary's blundering tour of the Middle East might be the latest incarnation of Innocents Abroad. "The people stared at us everywhere, and we stared at them," Twain wrote. "We bore down on them with America's greatness until we crushed them."

But the stakes are rather different from those on the Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion. "It would be a folly," says Pape, "were it not so dangerous."

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1581335,00.html>

For my money, if you could add together all the errors in constitional knowledge I see here at DU day in and day those errors still wouldn't total up to half the insult to our Constitution that Hughes has inflicted.

[Pacifist Patriot]

59. I'm inclined to agree.

I can forgive a modicum of ignorance from relative by-standers...her expression of presumed content in our Constitution is downright dangerous.

For my money, if you could add together all the errors in constitional knowledge I see here at DU day in and day those errors still wouldn't total up to half the insult to our Constitution that Hughes has inflicted.

[Greyhound]

24. Thank you and Brava! n/t

[progressoid]

26. B-b-but, stomping and kicking is what so many are good at!

Thanks for the brief review. A little sanity and clear thinking is always a good thing for us.

[bonito]

30. The first thing is to get verifiable ballots

Without having a trusted system, its fake.

[Peace Patriot]

33. Well, I agree, eyesroll, that we should understand the Constitution, the

law (how it's been interpreted), and the odds for and against what we want to do.

But we should also remember some things said by the Founders, to the point that we are a revolutionary country, with sovereignty vested in the people, who have the right to change the Constitution and throw off tyrannical government.

I am convinced that, if we didn't have Diebold and ES&S--two rightwing Bushite corporations--tabulating our votes with SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, that's what we would have done on Nov. 2, 2004-- legally and democratically thrown off a tyrannical government that is paying zero heed to the opinions of the great majority of people. (The disagreement between us and our tyrant is across the board, on all issues, and very big--up in the 60% to 70% range--and has been for some time.)

That avenue of change having been blockaded (with what looks like the insane complicity of the Democratic leadership, but is really just corruption of various kinds, including corruption in the $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle), we are trying to think creatively what to do, to fend off our country sinking into financial meltdown, chaos, food riots and bloody revolution.

How do we get our country back? How do we restore transparent, verifiable elections? And, if we can do that, what next? How do we UNDO all the damage that the Bush Cartel has inflicted?

FDR's attempt to "pack the Supreme Court" came into my mind recently, so I did some review of the history. The historical parallel is quite compelling: Greedbags, "robber barons" and the super-rich destroyed the U.S. economy; with one third of the country unemployed, and people starving, FDR and Congress enacted a series of innovative programs to stave off disaster and begin rebuilding an economic base, but were stymied by Supreme Court justices appointed during the "robber baron" era whose only interest was in protecting the super-rich and big business. So FDR asked Congress to increase the number of justices--intending to appoint liberal justices to outvote the dinosaurs.

One thing I don't know is, does Congress STILL HAVE the power to increase the number of justices? Do you know?

I presume they do. I don't believe the number 9 is in the Constitution. What FDR wanted to do was legal, just not very...well...not handled very well politically. It DID put pressure on the Court, though, which probably resulted in Justice Roberts (yep, same name) switching around and starting to support New Deal programs (the Social Security Act being one of them).

I'm hoping that we still have time to get rid of Diebold and ES&S (dump their election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor,' I say!), and that we can get it done at the state/local level (the federal level is hopelessly corrupt). If we can achieve transparent elections, we will begin electing true representatives of the people. This could happen quite fast actually, with transparent elections. People are fed up.

So, say, by 2012 or so, we have clean elections again, and elect a really good Congress. What could they do about Bushite/corporate shills on the Supreme Court?

Lots, actually. We (meaning our honestly elected representatives, acting on our behalf, and in response to our wishes) could 'pack the Supreme Court' (add liberal justices); could invalidate the 2004 election, due to secret programming (the non-transparency and unverifiability of the result, with extensive external evidence of a wrong result), and declare all Bush appointments from 2004 onward invalid, with the Senate withdrawing its confirmations, and force them all to step down under threat of impeachment (if they could impeach Bill Clinton for a white lie about a sexual affair, we can certainly find something to impeach these justices on--their 2000 Bush v. Gore ruling, and how they might have been paid for it, would be an interesting place to start investigating; maybe even invalidate the 2000 election as well (hm-m-m)--and/or...

...amend the Constitution to accomplish our purposes of reforming America's political and judicial systems, for instance, putting term limits on the justices, or making them subject to election; and other reforms, such as undoing corporate personhood, banning all corporate money, or all private money, in election campaigns (say, combined with devoting a percentage of the federal budget to candidate access to the voters; and reclaiming some of our public airwaves for political debate).

There is really no limit to what the sovereign people of the United States could do, including throwing out the Constitution and writing a new one. But, for the sake of stability, it would probably be wisest to work within its framework, and preserve the best of it, and discard or amend what is not working (outmoded items like the Electoral College, for instance). And the clause giving Congress, and only Congress, the right to declare war certainly needs strengthening.

We might also want to ban electronic voting forevermore. It does work in countries that have open source code and other controls (for instance, independent exit polls that are not DOCTORED on election night by news monopolies to "fit" the "official result" derived from secret formulae, but are used as honest verification tools). However, we might decide that the abuse in this case, in 2004, was so bad that these machines are never to be trusted again.

None of this can happen until we restore integrity to our election system--or some great catastrophe ignites reform. (I can think of a number of them that might.)

What Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the other Founders hoped was that they had created a system of government that could renew itself, that could alter course, undergo reform, and change with the times, as needed--a flexible system with a strong "balance of powers" that would be self-correcting, and that could prevent the nation from veering off into tyranny by the executive (their worst fear).

And they DEPENDED UPON voting by the people as the mechanism of change and renewal. That mechanism is now gravely compromised, if not completely inoperative. It MUST be restored as the first priority of reform, and the most fundamental and important power of the people, our only way to exercise our sovereignty.

We MUST do this, or our democracy is over--and the great revolution that they brought into being will be dead in America, its birthplace.

The dream will never die. It will be reborn. Freedom and equality and good and responsive government are everyone's dream. So it won't stay dead forever. But our children will have one terribly difficult mountain to climb to get it back, once it is gone. The difficulties of restoring transparent elections now are nothing compared to what they will face.

Then we must get to work and insure that this never happens again in our country, that private corporations become so powerful, and so corruptive, that they can quietly take over the counting of our votes, and withdraw that vote tabulation behind a veil of secrecy, with the public not even noticing, due to the complicity of corporate news monopolies and all those whom they have put into power.

[unblock]

35. regarding #2,

it is not clear that the vote of the electoral college can't be overturned if it was not duly constituted in the first place due to election fraud. we're in unchartered territory, but if the electoral college elected a president, and then after the electoral votes were counted by congress, and possibly after the president was sworn in, if was determined that many electors shouldn't have been part of the electoral college due to voting fraud, it would certainly be reasonable for the cheated candidate to sue for the right to serve as president.

the constitution does NOT say election fraud is ok provided it isn't detected in time.

[bobbieinok]

38. very good book used in my jr high school social studies class (in the 50s)

Your rugged Constitution: How America's house of freedom is planned and built by Bruce Allyn Findlay and Esther Blair Findlay

(I've found a few at used book stores)

it was set up article by article with a discussion 'you give' and 'you get'

the parts that were changed by amendments were marked through

as an 8th grader, everything marked through got extra attention....so the slave = 3/5 of a person really stuck in my mind

****

something that didn't strike me until 2000......the constitution is VERY SHORT

[Rex]

43. This is why I think we are screwed.

Great rant!

[SW FL Dem]

47. Thanks! You expressed my feelings very eloquently

Many times, I've wanted to say "ain't gonna happen" but then thought the better of it. We Dems and Progressives need to have a good idea of what is possible and what isn't.

[Senator]

49. Reality 101 for Defeatist Lefties

While I also decry the use of the word "should," the reality is that our biggest problem on the left is the number of us who spend most of our time discussing what "Should" be done (by others) instead of taking an action (however small) to actually get something done. One of the reasons for this is that there are worse words than "should" being bandied about -- some of these words are -- "never gonna happen" -- "Sorry, it doesn't happen." -- "And that's not going to happen."

Now it is not my intent to single out this poster, as this attitude is far more pervasive than the context of this post. (For example, I spent the entire months of Nov. and Dec of last year being told by good, smart people: "You'll never get a Senator.") But since I found a few aspects of this post confusing, the only real message that seems to be getting through (at least to me) is a defeatist one.

To address the confusing bits first, while the misuse of the word "impeachment" may well be pervasive I don't really see the substantive problem with that. Sure people could always use the phrase "impeach and remove" or "impeach, try, convict and remove" but the shorthand use of impeachment doesn't change or diminish the point being made. And no one I've seen that is seriously advocating impeachment is doing so without the presumption of taking back the House majority in 2006.

More troubling is the distinction being made between what "we can do" as opposed to "what we can petition our Representatives to do." It seems to be a distinction without a difference. Or is there someone suggesting another mechanism by which we can get things to happen?

The notion that there are some "rules," whether constitutional, legal, procedural, or whatever that tell We the People what we can or cannot demand or accomplish is something that gets "big swaths of the American foundation wrong entirely."

The People are sovereign here. The US Constitution is a contract among ourselves. It cedes no power over us to anyone else, it merely invests subordinate authority as necessary to form "a more perfect union." Now, one might argue (as I have) that this contract was put into breach on January 6th, 2001 and that this once-great nation exists (if at all) in a technical state of fascism. But what to DO about that is only limited be our ability to agree on what must be done.

And incidently, the reality is that protest demands, stomping, kicking, and holding your breath (instead of saying "yes" to contributing and volunteering) is the only thing that has ever gotten results.

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www.january6th.org

[ReadTomPaine]

50. Impressive.

Well said and thank you.

[prolesunited]

53. Just because more people should see this.

:kick:

[ComerPerro]

54. Yeah, those are the most disgusting truths

And that's why the Bush Administration doesn't care.

I've always said, prove all the election fraud you want, it won't make a damn bit of difference. He's the president now. Its not like the election would get overturned.

And, even if he is impeached and convicted, or if he has to resign in disgrace, he still gets his nominees on the bench.

And they are there for life.

[Richardo]

56. Will you marry me?

Nominated.

Thanks for the sanity, eyesroll. :thumbsup: