| | Today, in the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, we saw that it was Roberts, the alleged conservative, who bent reasoning into a pretzel-like shape to create a huge hole in our constitutional protection. This new hole may prove to be as big as the hole created by previous constitutional misconstruing of the meaning of "regulate commerce."
Now, any law is okay as long as it compels behaviors not directly, but by taxing those who don't engage in some desired behavior. This ruling stands as a horrendous problem in protecting us from unlawful takings. Before we could only be fined or penalized for violation of a valid criminal statute - and then only after an individual was able to avail himself of due process. Now, we can be "found guilty" and "fined" for not doing something - for not acting - and with no access to judicial relief - in effect, we have already been found guilty and can only stay execution of the sentence by paying for something we might not want.
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On occasion, on this site we talk about amendments to the constitution. Well, let me be the first to state what is now obvious - we need to amend the constitution to rewrite the very opening paragraph - getting rid of loose generalites. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Maybe replacing it with something like this: We the People of the United States, in order to protect our individual rights against the initiation of force, the threats of initiated force, fraud or theft, whether those actions come from outside of the nation or inside, whether those actions come from private individuals or government, do establish this constitution. Further, the government shall create civil courts for the purpose of allowing people to settle civil differences by objective law. The federal government shall have no powers that are not explicitly provided by this document. ------------------
Article 1, Section 8 which gives Congress the power to tax needs to be massively rewritten. Take away the power to tax even one penny that doesn't apply identically to everyone so that taxes can't be used as a stimuli to effect behavior. This is where they need to put in proper balanced budget language, cap total revenues as a percent of prior year's GNP.
They need to remove the language in clause 3 to delete the power to regulate commerce - replacing it with language that says, neither Congress, nor any state shall pass any law that restricts commerce across state laws, or with foreign entities.
They need to also change the language that allows the Federal government to print money. (And while there, drop the Post Office.
There should be an amendment to demand that congress shall initiate impeachment proceeding at any time that the president refuses to enforce passed laws or to exercise powers not given to the executive branch - this is language that must be added to the existing "high crimes or treason" language.
I could go on and on...
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Not much can be done about fixing this mess if we can't ensure that elected officials are not crooks. To win ideological arguments it is very helpful to have people being honest on their agenda's and beliefs. Towards that I've come up a constitutional amendment. It could create a new department, sort of like a new FBI agency but it would report to a body made of a rotating membership of say 9 State Attorney Generals. It would be funded solely by mandatory contributions of the States. It would have only one function - continual, in depth investigations of every elected official or high level appointees at the federal level. Each of those officials and appointees would have sign a release of privacy to this agency before they could take office.
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I think that today's conservatives are worse than today's liberals. I think ... if anyone destroys this country, it will be the conservatives -- because they do not know how to preach capitalism, to explain it to the people, because they do nothing except apologize, and because they're all altruists. They're all based on religious altruism and, on that combination of ideas, you cannot save this country.
