The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Article VI says so.
So what does that mean? What is law anyway? Why do we have to have laws? Isn't it enough to have Czars and other government officials to tell us what to do?
Lots of Americans are leery of the law. To them, law is mysterious, opaque. The domain of lawyers and judges who talk a hokus pokus language that nobody understands.
Or trusts.
Thomas Aquinas taught that law is a rule of reason, ordained and promulgated by proper authority and directed to the common good.
You can't have law without words. The rule of reason has to be expressed in words. Words that say what the law giver means. Words that can be understood by the people who see them or hear them.
That's why Hammurabi's Code was inscribed on pillars in the town square and why Moses came down from Mount Sinai with words on tablets of stone.
It's axiomatic that in the United States, we have government of laws and not of men. Our rights and duties as citizens are spelled out in words, printed and published in books. Available on the Internet.
We have a tradition, inherited from our English forebears, called the Common Law. Sometimes it is called 'Judge made law' because it grows out of the decisions of courts in individual cases.
Human life is very complicated. Things keep happening that never happened before. People keep getting in disputes that are not easily settled by reading the laws that have already been written by the legislature.
So judges have to figure out what should happen. And when they do, they write their opinions in words that get printed in books, so that next time something like that happens they'll know what to do.
Old Judge Tom Cooley, the 19th Century intellectual heavyweight who wrote a treatise on Constitutional Limitations, made it very clear that constitutions are not supposed to be changed by the common law.
In fact he said that any judge who tried to change the meaning of a constitution to "keep up with the times" would be guilty of violating the oath of office.
Article VI requires that judges swear to support “this constitution.” What else does “this constitution” mean except the very words being read?
Now comes Yale University Law School with a different idea.
Yale’s Dean, Robert Post, welcomed participants in a symposium entitled “The Constitution in 2020” by announcing that there is a New Haven school of constitutional theory which holds that the charter of our nation written in Philadelphia in 1787, while intended to be enduring and permanent, is being changed all the time by a process of metamorphosis.
The folks at Yale seem to think James Madison and company concocted a caterpillar which they can coax into a butterfly with a barrage of academic double talk.
Even after throwing a fig to John Marshall by quoting from Marbury v Madison,
“ The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing; if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?”
Dean Post acknowledged that while the constitution was intended to be fixed, “we presuppose that it will change.”
Change without being amended. Change without what George Washington called “the authentic act of the whole people.” Change without ratification. Change without the consent of the governed. Change that only scholars and law professors can predict.
I don’t buy it.
I don’t think the Yale Law School faculty speaks for the American people.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
FREEDOM
Buried in two large cardboard boxes in the basement storage room of our Northern Michigan cottage are eight thick books filled with speeches. They represent the work of a lifetime.
Sometimes Polly will get to poking through them in search of some ancient memento. Like last week.
We were entertaining some old friends, classmates of mine from grammar school and high school. Polly wanted to show them a commencement speech I gave at the University of Detroit High School back in 1969 The Jesuit faculty liked it well enough to have it printed and sent to their alumni.
I had talked about freedom, and here is what I said:
“If I were 18 years old, as you are, my dear graduates, and I could walk out of here into the cool night air and take a deep breath and look at all those zillions of stars in the sky, My definition of freedom would be: ‘I can do anything I want to do.’
Maybe that’s your definition – it’s not bad for starters. But there are some holes in it. I'm thinking now of the story of the two delegates to the elbow bender’s convention, who are looking out of the hotel window at a motionless figure on the sidewalk below, and one of them says,
‘Did you see him jump?’
And the other says, ‘He didn’t jump. He was trying to fly up to the roof.’
And the first one says, ‘Why didn't you stop him?’
And the other replies, ‘I thought he could make it!’
So the first limitation to our definition of freedom is that we are only free to do those things which are physically possible.
And the same goes for financial possibility, as well.
You may all be free to do anything you want to do. And you may all want to own a Cadillac convertible. But for the moment, at least, you probably have more hope of flying up to the roof.
So our freedom is limited to doing those things which we can do.
But our freedom is also limited, in a funny kind of a way, by the last half of our definition. ‘I can do anything I WANT to do.’
We are not actually free when we do those things which we actually do not want to do.
Take a man who languishes in the county jail for 30 days. If he doesn't want to be there, then he isn't free. There are some men who actually want to go to jail. Particularly when the cold weather sets in, and the park benches are covered with snow.
And there are some people who freely stay in prison for other reasons. I'm sure, for example, that St. Thomas More was a free man in the tower of London, because he freely chose not to speak the words which would have turned the jailer's key, and opened the door to slavery.
So you see you are not free to do those things which you do not actually WANT to do.
What are those things?
Well, you don't want to break the law. You don't want to commit sin. You don't want to hurt your parents, or your friends, or your neighbors, or your country. And you don't want to get sick, or be made the object of ridicule.
So here is our nice, neat, simple definition of freedom. Freedom simply means that you can do anything you want to do that is not:
- physically impossible
- financially impossible
- legally prohibited
- morally wrong
- harmful to your parents
- unkind to your friends
- injurious to your neighbors
- disloyal to your country
- bad for your health
- or just plain foolish.
Now that may not sound like a whole lot of freedom to you, but it's the nearest thing to perfect freedom that you have any right to expect.”
When you give a speech you never know who is in the audience or how your words will land on them.
Twenty five years after I gave that talk I got a call from a suburban Detroit lady who told me that her brother had graduated from U. of D. High in 1969 and that she was at that commencement. She wanted to get a copy of my speech because she wanted her 16 year old daughter to read it.
She made my day.
Sometimes Polly will get to poking through them in search of some ancient memento. Like last week.
We were entertaining some old friends, classmates of mine from grammar school and high school. Polly wanted to show them a commencement speech I gave at the University of Detroit High School back in 1969 The Jesuit faculty liked it well enough to have it printed and sent to their alumni.
I had talked about freedom, and here is what I said:
“If I were 18 years old, as you are, my dear graduates, and I could walk out of here into the cool night air and take a deep breath and look at all those zillions of stars in the sky, My definition of freedom would be: ‘I can do anything I want to do.’
Maybe that’s your definition – it’s not bad for starters. But there are some holes in it. I'm thinking now of the story of the two delegates to the elbow bender’s convention, who are looking out of the hotel window at a motionless figure on the sidewalk below, and one of them says,
‘Did you see him jump?’
And the other says, ‘He didn’t jump. He was trying to fly up to the roof.’
And the first one says, ‘Why didn't you stop him?’
And the other replies, ‘I thought he could make it!’
So the first limitation to our definition of freedom is that we are only free to do those things which are physically possible.
And the same goes for financial possibility, as well.
You may all be free to do anything you want to do. And you may all want to own a Cadillac convertible. But for the moment, at least, you probably have more hope of flying up to the roof.
So our freedom is limited to doing those things which we can do.
But our freedom is also limited, in a funny kind of a way, by the last half of our definition. ‘I can do anything I WANT to do.’
We are not actually free when we do those things which we actually do not want to do.
Take a man who languishes in the county jail for 30 days. If he doesn't want to be there, then he isn't free. There are some men who actually want to go to jail. Particularly when the cold weather sets in, and the park benches are covered with snow.
And there are some people who freely stay in prison for other reasons. I'm sure, for example, that St. Thomas More was a free man in the tower of London, because he freely chose not to speak the words which would have turned the jailer's key, and opened the door to slavery.
So you see you are not free to do those things which you do not actually WANT to do.
What are those things?
Well, you don't want to break the law. You don't want to commit sin. You don't want to hurt your parents, or your friends, or your neighbors, or your country. And you don't want to get sick, or be made the object of ridicule.
So here is our nice, neat, simple definition of freedom. Freedom simply means that you can do anything you want to do that is not:
- physically impossible
- financially impossible
- legally prohibited
- morally wrong
- harmful to your parents
- unkind to your friends
- injurious to your neighbors
- disloyal to your country
- bad for your health
- or just plain foolish.
Now that may not sound like a whole lot of freedom to you, but it's the nearest thing to perfect freedom that you have any right to expect.”
When you give a speech you never know who is in the audience or how your words will land on them.
Twenty five years after I gave that talk I got a call from a suburban Detroit lady who told me that her brother had graduated from U. of D. High in 1969 and that she was at that commencement. She wanted to get a copy of my speech because she wanted her 16 year old daughter to read it.
She made my day.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
TERM LIMTS
What follows is quoted directly from Wikipedia:
Term limits, or rotation in office, date back to the American Revolution, and prior to that to the democracies and republics of antiquity. The council of 500 in ancient Athens rotated its entire membership annually, as did the ephorate in ancient Sparta. The ancient Roman Republic featured a system of elected magistrates—tribunes of the plebs, aediles, quaestors, praetors, and consuls—who served a single term of one year, with reelection to the same magistracy forbidden for ten years. Many of the founders of the United States were educated in the classics, and quite familiar with rotation in office during antiquity. The debates of that day reveal a desire to study and profit from the object lessons offered by ancient democracy.
In 1783, rotation experiments were taking place at the state level. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 set maximum service in the Pennsylvania General Assembly at "four years in seven." Benjamin Franklin's influence is seen not only in that he chaired the constitutional convention which drafted the Pennsylvania constitution, but also because it included, virtually unchanged, Franklin's earlier proposals on executive rotation. Pennsylvania's plural executive was composed of twelve citizens elected for the term of three years, followed by a mandatory vacation of four years.
On October 2, 1789, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of thirteen to examine forms of government for the impending union of the states. Among the proposals was that from the State of Virginia, written by Thomas Jefferson, urging a limitation of tenure, "to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress. The committee made recommendations, which as regards congressional term-limits were incorporated unchanged into the Articles of Confederation. The fifth Article stated that "no person shall be capable of being a delegate [to the continental congress] for more than three years in any term of six years."
In contrast to the Articles of Confederation, the federal constitution convention at Philadelphia omitted mandatory term-limits from the second national frame of government, i.e. the U.S. Constitution of 1787 to the present. Nonetheless, due largely to grass roots support for the principle of rotation, rapid turnover in Congress prevailed by extra-constitutional means. Also George Washington set the precedent for a two-term tradition that prevailed (with the exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's four terms) until the 22nd Amendment of 1951.
However, when the states ratified the Constitution (1787-88), several leading statesmen regarded the lack of mandatory limits to tenure as a dangerous defect, especially, they thought, as regards the Presidency and the Senate. Richard Henry Lee viewed the absence of legal limits to tenure, together with certain other features of the Constitution, as "most highly and dangerously oligarchic." Both Jefferson and George Mason advised limits on reelection to the Senate and to the Presidency, because said Mason, "nothing is so essential to the preservation of a Republican government as a periodic rotation." The historian Mercy Otis Warren, warned that "there is no provision for a rotation, nor anything to prevent the perpetuity of office in the same hands for life; which by a little well timed bribery, will probably be done...."
The fact that "perpetuity in office" was not approached until the 20th century is due in part to the influence of rotation in office as a popular 19th century concept. "Ideas are, in truth, forces," and rotation in office enjoyed such normative support, especially at the local level, that it altered political reality.
James Fennimore Cooper, the novelist, described the common view that "contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed." An article in the Richmond Enquirer (1822) noted that the "long cherished" principle of rotation in office had been impressed on the republican mind "by a kind of intuitive impulse, unassailable to argument or authority."
Beginning about the 1830s, Jacksonian democracy introduced a less idealistic twist to the practice of limiting terms. Rotation in office came to mean taking turns in the distribution of political prizes. Rotation of nominations to the U.S. House of Representatives – the prizes – became a key element of payoffs to the party faithful. The leading lights in the local party machinery came to regard a nomination for the House as "salary" for political services rendered. A new code of political ethics evolved, based on the proposition that "turnabout is fair play." In short, rotation of nominations was intertwined with the spoils system.
In district nominating conventions local leaders could negotiate and enforce agreements to pass the nominations around among themselves. Abraham Lincoln was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1846 under such a bargain, and he returned home to Springfield after a single congressional term because, he wrote, "to enter myself as a competitor of another, or to authorize anyone so to enter me, is what my word and honor forbid."
During the Civil War, the Confederate States constitution limited its president to a single six-year term.
The practice of nomination rotation for the House of Representatives began to decline after the Civil War. It took a generation or so before the direct primary system, civil service reforms, and the ethic of professionalism worked to eliminate rotation in office as a common political practice. By the turn of the 20th century the era of incumbency was coming into full swing.
A total of 8 presidents served two full terms and declined a third and three presidents served one full term and refused a second. After World War II, however, an officeholder class had developed to the point that congressional tenure rivaled that of the U.S. Supreme Court, where tenure is for life. "Homesteading" in Congress, made possible by reelection rates that approached 100% by the end of the 20th century, brought about a popular insurgency known as the "term-limits movement"
Term limits, or rotation in office, date back to the American Revolution, and prior to that to the democracies and republics of antiquity. The council of 500 in ancient Athens rotated its entire membership annually, as did the ephorate in ancient Sparta. The ancient Roman Republic featured a system of elected magistrates—tribunes of the plebs, aediles, quaestors, praetors, and consuls—who served a single term of one year, with reelection to the same magistracy forbidden for ten years. Many of the founders of the United States were educated in the classics, and quite familiar with rotation in office during antiquity. The debates of that day reveal a desire to study and profit from the object lessons offered by ancient democracy.
In 1783, rotation experiments were taking place at the state level. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 set maximum service in the Pennsylvania General Assembly at "four years in seven." Benjamin Franklin's influence is seen not only in that he chaired the constitutional convention which drafted the Pennsylvania constitution, but also because it included, virtually unchanged, Franklin's earlier proposals on executive rotation. Pennsylvania's plural executive was composed of twelve citizens elected for the term of three years, followed by a mandatory vacation of four years.
On October 2, 1789, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of thirteen to examine forms of government for the impending union of the states. Among the proposals was that from the State of Virginia, written by Thomas Jefferson, urging a limitation of tenure, "to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress. The committee made recommendations, which as regards congressional term-limits were incorporated unchanged into the Articles of Confederation. The fifth Article stated that "no person shall be capable of being a delegate [to the continental congress] for more than three years in any term of six years."
In contrast to the Articles of Confederation, the federal constitution convention at Philadelphia omitted mandatory term-limits from the second national frame of government, i.e. the U.S. Constitution of 1787 to the present. Nonetheless, due largely to grass roots support for the principle of rotation, rapid turnover in Congress prevailed by extra-constitutional means. Also George Washington set the precedent for a two-term tradition that prevailed (with the exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's four terms) until the 22nd Amendment of 1951.
However, when the states ratified the Constitution (1787-88), several leading statesmen regarded the lack of mandatory limits to tenure as a dangerous defect, especially, they thought, as regards the Presidency and the Senate. Richard Henry Lee viewed the absence of legal limits to tenure, together with certain other features of the Constitution, as "most highly and dangerously oligarchic." Both Jefferson and George Mason advised limits on reelection to the Senate and to the Presidency, because said Mason, "nothing is so essential to the preservation of a Republican government as a periodic rotation." The historian Mercy Otis Warren, warned that "there is no provision for a rotation, nor anything to prevent the perpetuity of office in the same hands for life; which by a little well timed bribery, will probably be done...."
The fact that "perpetuity in office" was not approached until the 20th century is due in part to the influence of rotation in office as a popular 19th century concept. "Ideas are, in truth, forces," and rotation in office enjoyed such normative support, especially at the local level, that it altered political reality.
James Fennimore Cooper, the novelist, described the common view that "contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed." An article in the Richmond Enquirer (1822) noted that the "long cherished" principle of rotation in office had been impressed on the republican mind "by a kind of intuitive impulse, unassailable to argument or authority."
Beginning about the 1830s, Jacksonian democracy introduced a less idealistic twist to the practice of limiting terms. Rotation in office came to mean taking turns in the distribution of political prizes. Rotation of nominations to the U.S. House of Representatives – the prizes – became a key element of payoffs to the party faithful. The leading lights in the local party machinery came to regard a nomination for the House as "salary" for political services rendered. A new code of political ethics evolved, based on the proposition that "turnabout is fair play." In short, rotation of nominations was intertwined with the spoils system.
In district nominating conventions local leaders could negotiate and enforce agreements to pass the nominations around among themselves. Abraham Lincoln was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1846 under such a bargain, and he returned home to Springfield after a single congressional term because, he wrote, "to enter myself as a competitor of another, or to authorize anyone so to enter me, is what my word and honor forbid."
During the Civil War, the Confederate States constitution limited its president to a single six-year term.
The practice of nomination rotation for the House of Representatives began to decline after the Civil War. It took a generation or so before the direct primary system, civil service reforms, and the ethic of professionalism worked to eliminate rotation in office as a common political practice. By the turn of the 20th century the era of incumbency was coming into full swing.
A total of 8 presidents served two full terms and declined a third and three presidents served one full term and refused a second. After World War II, however, an officeholder class had developed to the point that congressional tenure rivaled that of the U.S. Supreme Court, where tenure is for life. "Homesteading" in Congress, made possible by reelection rates that approached 100% by the end of the 20th century, brought about a popular insurgency known as the "term-limits movement"
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
NO MORE WHITE FOLKS
There’s a message going around on the Internet that is causing quite a stir.
It predicts that in about 30 years Western Europe will be comprised of Muslim countries. Omar Kadhafi, the Lybian dictator, has chortled that the conquest of Europe will be achieved without firing a shot.
Anthropologists agree with him.
Birth rates as low as 1.1 in Spain and 1.3 in Italy are far below the 2.1 average needed to sustain the current population. Statistics demonstrate that birth rates below 1.8 constitute irreversible trends.
The same Internet essay tells us that around 1970 there were 100,000 Muslims in the United States. Today there are over 9,000,000.
The birth rate among Caucasians in our country is about the same as France or Great Britain, 1.7. The influx of immigrants from Mexico, mostly illegal, adds enough babies to bring our rate up to a sustainable level of around 2.2.
Which sort of gives us a Hobson’s choice. Our great grandchildren can either learn to speak Spanish or they can adjust to life under Shiria Law.
I suppose all good things have to come to an end.
Looking back, I have to say we were a great race of people.
We were philosophers, theologians, scientists, artists, engineers. We harnessed the atom and went to the moon.
We built great cities and universities, invented computers and established a global communication network we called the world wide web.
Our man Thomas Edison gave us electricity, and Henry Ford gave us wheels.
A white man named Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Another, James Naismith, put a basket on the side of a barn and started throwing balls at it, launching a sport now played around the world. Papa Halas and a few other brave souls organized a football league.
We called it Western Civilization. We taught it in our schools and colleges. Its roots were in the Jewish and Christian religions which revealed to us that there is a single omnipotent Creator who is responsible for our existence and who continues to sustain us on this planet.
From those religious traditions we learned that we were unique and special creatures, entitled to be free, destined for greatness, charged with the care and protection of our earthly home.
From their basic tenets we structured systems of governance in which the people elected representatives to make decisions for the common good, and we wrote constitutions to specify their powers and define the unalienable rights of the people.
Our Western Civilization was a success. We became rich, powerful, comfortable and secure. We invented medicines and built hospitals and we lived longer and longer.
And we had fun. Boy, did we have fun. Every day was Disneyland. Entertainment became ubiquitous and incessant. We ate until we were fat, then dieted to be beautiful.
Sex became recreation. Babies, like pets, were optional possessions. About 25 percent of new white people are destroyed in their mother’s wombs, and never see the light of day.
And so we are not replacing ourselves. We are being destroyed from within, corrupted by our own success and gratification.
What a pity.
It predicts that in about 30 years Western Europe will be comprised of Muslim countries. Omar Kadhafi, the Lybian dictator, has chortled that the conquest of Europe will be achieved without firing a shot.
Anthropologists agree with him.
Birth rates as low as 1.1 in Spain and 1.3 in Italy are far below the 2.1 average needed to sustain the current population. Statistics demonstrate that birth rates below 1.8 constitute irreversible trends.
The same Internet essay tells us that around 1970 there were 100,000 Muslims in the United States. Today there are over 9,000,000.
The birth rate among Caucasians in our country is about the same as France or Great Britain, 1.7. The influx of immigrants from Mexico, mostly illegal, adds enough babies to bring our rate up to a sustainable level of around 2.2.
Which sort of gives us a Hobson’s choice. Our great grandchildren can either learn to speak Spanish or they can adjust to life under Shiria Law.
I suppose all good things have to come to an end.
Looking back, I have to say we were a great race of people.
We were philosophers, theologians, scientists, artists, engineers. We harnessed the atom and went to the moon.
We built great cities and universities, invented computers and established a global communication network we called the world wide web.
Our man Thomas Edison gave us electricity, and Henry Ford gave us wheels.
A white man named Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Another, James Naismith, put a basket on the side of a barn and started throwing balls at it, launching a sport now played around the world. Papa Halas and a few other brave souls organized a football league.
We called it Western Civilization. We taught it in our schools and colleges. Its roots were in the Jewish and Christian religions which revealed to us that there is a single omnipotent Creator who is responsible for our existence and who continues to sustain us on this planet.
From those religious traditions we learned that we were unique and special creatures, entitled to be free, destined for greatness, charged with the care and protection of our earthly home.
From their basic tenets we structured systems of governance in which the people elected representatives to make decisions for the common good, and we wrote constitutions to specify their powers and define the unalienable rights of the people.
Our Western Civilization was a success. We became rich, powerful, comfortable and secure. We invented medicines and built hospitals and we lived longer and longer.
And we had fun. Boy, did we have fun. Every day was Disneyland. Entertainment became ubiquitous and incessant. We ate until we were fat, then dieted to be beautiful.
Sex became recreation. Babies, like pets, were optional possessions. About 25 percent of new white people are destroyed in their mother’s wombs, and never see the light of day.
And so we are not replacing ourselves. We are being destroyed from within, corrupted by our own success and gratification.
What a pity.
Monday, July 19, 2010
WE'RE NOT CELEBRITIES
But you know us. We are your friends and neighbors. The folks who live next door and down the street.
A builder from Colorado, a grandmother from Florida, a sheriff from Washington, a retired judge from Michigan, a writer from California, a grad student from Louisiana.
Computer guys, teachers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, economists and actors.
People you never met and never heard about, but people just like you who care about America, who love our country, its history, its Constitution, and its promise of liberty and opportunity.
We have come together because we care about the United States.
We’re worried about our beloved nation.
We don’t think the government in Washington D.C. is working the way Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington intended it to work.
It was supposed to be a federal government, comprised of sovereign states, exercising limited powers. It was not supposed to be in charge of everything. It was not supposed to be dictating every aspect of our lives from the cradle to the grave.
The government created in Philadelphia in 1789 was not a socialist dictatorship, it did not create a ruling class oligarchy or authorize politicians to feather their own nests with the earnings of the people.
The Founders knew that self interest and partisanship are the enemies of liberty.
They recognized that the government they designed could become corrupted by the very individuals who were elected to run it, and they provided a way for the people to react, to come together and to fix it.
They gave use a remedy, and we, the people, intend to use it.
It’s called an Article V Convention. It’s an amendatory convention. A way for the people to draft, refine, and propose individual amendments to strengthen the Constitution we already have.
It’s not empowered to write a new constitution.
The Founders expected the Constitution they gave us to be a living document. They expected us to adopt amendments that would keep America the land of the free.
That’s why We The People have come together in Convention USA.
We want you to come and join us. We need your common sense, your loyalty to American principles and traditions, your faith in our ability to protect our Constitution.
When the Philadelphia Convention was finished, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government had been created. His answer echoes down through the years to each and every one of us:
“It is a Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
We invite you to visit www.ConventionUSA.org. Do it now. And please forward this message to every concerned citizen you know.
We are the people. And we are all in this together.
A builder from Colorado, a grandmother from Florida, a sheriff from Washington, a retired judge from Michigan, a writer from California, a grad student from Louisiana.
Computer guys, teachers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, economists and actors.
People you never met and never heard about, but people just like you who care about America, who love our country, its history, its Constitution, and its promise of liberty and opportunity.
We have come together because we care about the United States.
We’re worried about our beloved nation.
We don’t think the government in Washington D.C. is working the way Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington intended it to work.
It was supposed to be a federal government, comprised of sovereign states, exercising limited powers. It was not supposed to be in charge of everything. It was not supposed to be dictating every aspect of our lives from the cradle to the grave.
The government created in Philadelphia in 1789 was not a socialist dictatorship, it did not create a ruling class oligarchy or authorize politicians to feather their own nests with the earnings of the people.
The Founders knew that self interest and partisanship are the enemies of liberty.
They recognized that the government they designed could become corrupted by the very individuals who were elected to run it, and they provided a way for the people to react, to come together and to fix it.
They gave use a remedy, and we, the people, intend to use it.
It’s called an Article V Convention. It’s an amendatory convention. A way for the people to draft, refine, and propose individual amendments to strengthen the Constitution we already have.
It’s not empowered to write a new constitution.
The Founders expected the Constitution they gave us to be a living document. They expected us to adopt amendments that would keep America the land of the free.
That’s why We The People have come together in Convention USA.
We want you to come and join us. We need your common sense, your loyalty to American principles and traditions, your faith in our ability to protect our Constitution.
When the Philadelphia Convention was finished, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government had been created. His answer echoes down through the years to each and every one of us:
“It is a Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
We invite you to visit www.ConventionUSA.org. Do it now. And please forward this message to every concerned citizen you know.
We are the people. And we are all in this together.
Monday, June 28, 2010
IT'S HELL TO BE NOBODY
Way back in 1970, when I was Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, my secretary announced one day that my uncle, Jim Brennan was on the phone.
I don’t think he had ever called me before, or ever did thereafter.
I picked up the phone and said “Hello” expecting to have a cordial family chat with my Dad’s younger brother.
It didn’t work out that way. He immediately launched into a diatribe about Who did I think I was, big deal Chief Justice, that you don’t return people’s phone calls, and your sainted father, God Rest His Soul, would be ashamed of you being so stuck up like some kinda big shot.
I got him calmed down and found out that a member of a poor family in Lansing to whom my grandmother and my aunts and uncles had been sending clothes and canned goods for many years, had called my office a few days before. I wasn’t in. He left his name and phone number.
My secretary asked me if I knew who he was or what he might be calling about. I said “No” on both points, and told her to ignore the call.
The dressing down from Uncle Jim left an impression.
From that day on, I return phone calls. It’s annoying and inconvenient some times, but it’s better than living with the guilt.
I thought of Uncle Jim today as I reflected on a recent exchange of email with the columnist George Will.
Mr. Will did an interesting column on Sunday about the Kagan appointment. I thought his views on appointing Justices of the Supreme Court might be of interest to delegates to Convention USA, and I wrote to ask if he would consider accepting appointment to the convention’s Advisory Board.
Assuming that he must receive voluminous email, I lead with a subject line that I hoped would get his attention. Under the heading “From a Former Chief Justice,” this is what I wrote:
Mr. Will:
I am certain that you cannot read all your email. I just hope that the subject line will induce you to give me three minutes of your time.
I want to call your attention to www.ConventionUSA.org, an interactive, virtual Article V amendatory convention on the Internet. It is operated by a non profit corporation supported by the dues of the delegates. Any citizen can be a delegate.
We are recruiting a distinguished panel of constitutional scholars and experts to serve as an advisory board. I invite you to join them. There is no cost or obligation other than to render such advice to the delegates as you may get the urge to render, when as and if the urge should strike you.
Your op ed piece today is the kind of realistic thinking I would want all of our delegates to read.
Please look at our web site, at the names already on the Board of Advisors, and accept my invitation.
Thomas E. Brennan
Former Chief Justice of Michigan
Founder, Thomas Cooley Law School
President, Convention USA, Inc.
I sent that email at 6:13:31 PM on June 27.
At exactly 6:14:06 PM on June 27, I received the following reply:
Thank you for your interest in George Will's column.
Due to the high volume of correspondence it is difficult for Mr. Will to reply, but your readership is deeply appreciated.
Doubting that anyone could have read my email, typed that answer and pushed the send button in 35 seconds flat, I sent Mr. Will the following:
While I appreciate the prompt reply to my email, I have the uneasy feeling that it was generated digitally and that no human being has in fact ever seen or read what I wrote to Mr. Will.
Again, I am sympathetic to the demands caused by a high volume of emails, but I had supposed that there are some clerical personnel whose responsibility it is to read or at least skim over, the emails that come in, and make some preliminary decision about whether an email is sufficiently substantive to, at least, merit the attention of a second, slightly higher level of gatekeeper who might have been endowed by his or her Creator with a higher capacity for exercising judgment.
I am therefore requesting that your acknowledgement of this email be accompanied by the name of a real human being who has seen it at your end.
Thanking you in advance for this courtesy, I remain,
Thomas E. Brennan
Former Chief Justice of Michigan
Founder, Thomas Cooley Law School
President, Convention USA, Inc.
I haven’t heard from George. Maybe I should ask my Uncle Jim, God rest his soul, to give him a nudge.
I don’t think he had ever called me before, or ever did thereafter.
I picked up the phone and said “Hello” expecting to have a cordial family chat with my Dad’s younger brother.
It didn’t work out that way. He immediately launched into a diatribe about Who did I think I was, big deal Chief Justice, that you don’t return people’s phone calls, and your sainted father, God Rest His Soul, would be ashamed of you being so stuck up like some kinda big shot.
I got him calmed down and found out that a member of a poor family in Lansing to whom my grandmother and my aunts and uncles had been sending clothes and canned goods for many years, had called my office a few days before. I wasn’t in. He left his name and phone number.
My secretary asked me if I knew who he was or what he might be calling about. I said “No” on both points, and told her to ignore the call.
The dressing down from Uncle Jim left an impression.
From that day on, I return phone calls. It’s annoying and inconvenient some times, but it’s better than living with the guilt.
I thought of Uncle Jim today as I reflected on a recent exchange of email with the columnist George Will.
Mr. Will did an interesting column on Sunday about the Kagan appointment. I thought his views on appointing Justices of the Supreme Court might be of interest to delegates to Convention USA, and I wrote to ask if he would consider accepting appointment to the convention’s Advisory Board.
Assuming that he must receive voluminous email, I lead with a subject line that I hoped would get his attention. Under the heading “From a Former Chief Justice,” this is what I wrote:
Mr. Will:
I am certain that you cannot read all your email. I just hope that the subject line will induce you to give me three minutes of your time.
I want to call your attention to www.ConventionUSA.org, an interactive, virtual Article V amendatory convention on the Internet. It is operated by a non profit corporation supported by the dues of the delegates. Any citizen can be a delegate.
We are recruiting a distinguished panel of constitutional scholars and experts to serve as an advisory board. I invite you to join them. There is no cost or obligation other than to render such advice to the delegates as you may get the urge to render, when as and if the urge should strike you.
Your op ed piece today is the kind of realistic thinking I would want all of our delegates to read.
Please look at our web site, at the names already on the Board of Advisors, and accept my invitation.
Thomas E. Brennan
Former Chief Justice of Michigan
Founder, Thomas Cooley Law School
President, Convention USA, Inc.
I sent that email at 6:13:31 PM on June 27.
At exactly 6:14:06 PM on June 27, I received the following reply:
Thank you for your interest in George Will's column.
Due to the high volume of correspondence it is difficult for Mr. Will to reply, but your readership is deeply appreciated.
Doubting that anyone could have read my email, typed that answer and pushed the send button in 35 seconds flat, I sent Mr. Will the following:
While I appreciate the prompt reply to my email, I have the uneasy feeling that it was generated digitally and that no human being has in fact ever seen or read what I wrote to Mr. Will.
Again, I am sympathetic to the demands caused by a high volume of emails, but I had supposed that there are some clerical personnel whose responsibility it is to read or at least skim over, the emails that come in, and make some preliminary decision about whether an email is sufficiently substantive to, at least, merit the attention of a second, slightly higher level of gatekeeper who might have been endowed by his or her Creator with a higher capacity for exercising judgment.
I am therefore requesting that your acknowledgement of this email be accompanied by the name of a real human being who has seen it at your end.
Thanking you in advance for this courtesy, I remain,
Thomas E. Brennan
Former Chief Justice of Michigan
Founder, Thomas Cooley Law School
President, Convention USA, Inc.
I haven’t heard from George. Maybe I should ask my Uncle Jim, God rest his soul, to give him a nudge.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
MY AGENDA
In my efforts to focus the American people on the need to consider amendments to the Constitution, I have stumbled on a number of patriotic folks who have their own agendas for saving the nation.
Many, perhaps most, of these have a decided tilt to the left or the right. That’s in the nature of politics, I guess.
But I have always believed that there are a number of common sense ideas that straddle the gulch between liberal and conservative; ideas that would have the kind of broad based appeal needed to win approval by a super majority of the states and of our fellow citizens.
I have been thinking outside the box for so long, I don’t even know where the box is. So, at the risk of finding out that nobody agrees with me, here are some of the constitutional amendments I have scribbled on foolscap over the years:
SUPREME COURT REFORM
The Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of the nine current members and their successors who shall be appointed for terms of eighteen years, by the President, without Senate confirmation, from a list of five nominees selected for their learning, experience and temperament by the unanimous agreement of the Justices of the Supreme Court, no two of which nominees shall be residents of the same State or graduates of the same law school.
If the Court does not deliver its list of nominees to the President within seven days of the occurrence of a vacancy, the sitting Court shall be dissolved and replaced by Judges of the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals chosen by lot.
FINANCIAL REFORM
Any State shall have standing to challenge the constitutionality of a law, appropriation, or expenditure of the United States, and the courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction in such cases.
CONGRESSIONAL REFORM
Members of Congress shall receive an annual salary only during their terms of office equal to one half of the annual salary paid to the President of the United States, and no other compensation, benefit or retirement. The Congress shall pass no law exempting Members of Congress from the payment of a tax.
LEGISLATIVE REFORM
All bills in Congress shall be written in the English language, shall consist of no more than 4,000 words and shall address only one subject matter, which must be clearly stated in the title. No affirmative vote for any bill shall be cast or counted unless the Member shall have certified under oath that he or she has read the bill and understands it.
ENTERPRISE REFORM
The Congress shall make no law, nor authorize any expenditure of public funds to invest in, loan to, or subsidize any private corporation or enterprise by reason if its insolvency.
TERM LIMITS
No person shall be eligible for election to the House of Representatives more than six times, nor to the Senate more than twice.
IMMIGRATION REFORM
No person, not a legal resident of the United States, shall be eligible to receive any health, education or welfare benefit from the United States or from any State.
EXECUTIVE REFORM
The Congress shall make no law delegating its authority to declare war, impose taxes, borrow money or regulate interstate commerce to the President or to any branch of the Executive Department.
May not cure everything, but it’s a start.
Many, perhaps most, of these have a decided tilt to the left or the right. That’s in the nature of politics, I guess.
But I have always believed that there are a number of common sense ideas that straddle the gulch between liberal and conservative; ideas that would have the kind of broad based appeal needed to win approval by a super majority of the states and of our fellow citizens.
I have been thinking outside the box for so long, I don’t even know where the box is. So, at the risk of finding out that nobody agrees with me, here are some of the constitutional amendments I have scribbled on foolscap over the years:
SUPREME COURT REFORM
The Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of the nine current members and their successors who shall be appointed for terms of eighteen years, by the President, without Senate confirmation, from a list of five nominees selected for their learning, experience and temperament by the unanimous agreement of the Justices of the Supreme Court, no two of which nominees shall be residents of the same State or graduates of the same law school.
If the Court does not deliver its list of nominees to the President within seven days of the occurrence of a vacancy, the sitting Court shall be dissolved and replaced by Judges of the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals chosen by lot.
FINANCIAL REFORM
Any State shall have standing to challenge the constitutionality of a law, appropriation, or expenditure of the United States, and the courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction in such cases.
CONGRESSIONAL REFORM
Members of Congress shall receive an annual salary only during their terms of office equal to one half of the annual salary paid to the President of the United States, and no other compensation, benefit or retirement. The Congress shall pass no law exempting Members of Congress from the payment of a tax.
LEGISLATIVE REFORM
All bills in Congress shall be written in the English language, shall consist of no more than 4,000 words and shall address only one subject matter, which must be clearly stated in the title. No affirmative vote for any bill shall be cast or counted unless the Member shall have certified under oath that he or she has read the bill and understands it.
ENTERPRISE REFORM
The Congress shall make no law, nor authorize any expenditure of public funds to invest in, loan to, or subsidize any private corporation or enterprise by reason if its insolvency.
TERM LIMITS
No person shall be eligible for election to the House of Representatives more than six times, nor to the Senate more than twice.
IMMIGRATION REFORM
No person, not a legal resident of the United States, shall be eligible to receive any health, education or welfare benefit from the United States or from any State.
EXECUTIVE REFORM
The Congress shall make no law delegating its authority to declare war, impose taxes, borrow money or regulate interstate commerce to the President or to any branch of the Executive Department.
May not cure everything, but it’s a start.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)