TIME FOR A NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY

The hottest session at CPAC last week was the panel discussion entitled “Should we shoot all the consultants?”

Former Democrat pollster Pat Caddell lit up the room with a blistering indictment of the professional campaign consultants who have monopolized GOP strategy for decades.

He called them racketeers, interested only in making money from naïve business moguls, who think that elections can be bought by the highest bidder.

The message then, becomes whatever the campaign professionals tell the candidates they need to say to get elected.

A pretty cynical and inverted way to run for public office.

And an utterly anemic charter for a political party.

There’s lots of hand wringing about the Republican Party these days, not the least of which comes from well meaning citizens who believe a two party system is a good way to run a country.

Doesn’t matter what makes them different. Like a scrub basketball game between the skins and the shirts. Having Red States and Blue States is a good way to smoke out the best leaders.

Competition fosters excellence, they say.

Unhappily, that’s about what Presidential elections have come down to.

It’s National Socialism against National Capitalism.

It’s a choice between government running business or business running government.

Either way, it all happens in Washington, D.C. Either way, the money changers in the temple are the hustlers inside the Beltway.

For more than a hundred years, the Republican Party has been the Party of Abraham Lincoln.

Many historians believe that Lincoln’s successful defense of the Union actually changed the nature of our country from a union of sovereign states to a single national government.

Unfortunately he was assassinated before he could oversee the reconstruction of the South. Lincoln’s magnanimity was replaced by a vengeful Congress’s policies which diminished the sovereignty of the states.

Since then, Movies and mobility, travel and technology, cars and communications have all conspired to blur the boundaries of the fifty states.

Still, human beings may inhabit a planet, a continent or a nation, but they live in communities.

And the Constitution of the United States is premised upon the understanding that our people are citizens of sovereign states as surely as they are citizens of the nation.

It is time for the Republican Party to be inspired as much by Thomas Jefferson as by Abraham Lincoln.

There is no national economy in America. A minimum wage in New York City is different from one in Mississippi.

Kansas and Michigan run on difference economic cycles. The weather is different. The cultures are different. The accents are different.

People trust the government that is closest to home.

There are currently 30 Republican Governors. Not just red states. New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin all have Republican governors.

It’s time for the GOP to become the party of popular sovereignty. The party that wants to get the national government out of education, health care, marriage, real estate, criminal law, welfare and local business and return the role of governing to the governors and legislatures of the fifty states.

A good place to start would be to endorse the non partisan Supreme Court Amendment.

More on that later.

LET'S JUST DO IT

On August 21, 1789, the Congress of the United States, by a two thirds vote in both Houses, proposed twelve amendments to the federal constitution.

Ten of them were promptly ratified by the states. They are known as the Bill of Rights.

The other two were not ratified immediately. One of them, the original second article, was finally ratified on May 7, 1992, almost 203 years after being proposed by Congress. It prohibits Congress from raising their own salaries during their term of office.

That leaves just one piece of unfinished business. The original constitutional amendment proposed by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson that was to assure that the United States would be a ‘more perfect union.’

Officially known as “Article the First,” the amendment established the ratio of Representatives in Congress to the expanding population of the nation.

There was to be one representative for every thirty thousand people until the House of Representatives reached 100 members. Then there would be one representative for every forty thousand people until there were 200 in the House.

After that, the amendment specified that there should one representative for every fifty thousand people, to be adjusted after every decennial census.

The 2010 census counted 308,745,538 people in the United States. That figures out to 6,175 Representatives in Congress.

Gulp!

That’s a lot more than the 435 professional, career politicians who now live and work inside the beltway around our nation’s Capital.

You betcha.

Throwing out 435 entrenched, lobby financed, political office holders and replacing them with 6,175 folks elected by their friends and neighbors is a big deal.

A very big deal.

But it ought to be done, and it can be done. Just like the 27th Amendment.

All it takes is the ratification of 38 state legislatures.

Eleven States are already on board:

Virginia ratified on November 3, 1789

New Jersey Ratified on November 20, 1789

Maryland ratified on December 19, 1789

North Carolina ratified on December 22, 1789

South Carolina ratified on January 19, 1790

New Hampshire ratified on January 25, 1790

New York ratified on March 27, 1790

Rhode Island ratified June 15, 1790

Pennsylvania ratified on September 21, 1791

Vermont ratified on November 3, 1791

Kentucky ratified on June 24, 1792

So here is the question. It’s more important than a balanced budget, more important than immigration reform, more important than gun legislation, gay rights or health care.

Are there twenty-seven more State Legislatures who will ratify Article the First and return the government of the United States to one that is of the people, by the people and for the people?

PAULIBUSTER

It was just like the old days, when Senators spoke with passion and somebody listened.

Yesterday, the whole nation was in the gallery.

We saw a tired, determined, intelligent and principled gentleman from Kentucky standing up in our computers.

Standing up for America.

Standing up for the Constitution.

The Wall Street Journal gave him a haughty negative review. The Washington Post, no fan of conservatives, acknowledged that Rand Paul is a man of principle, concluding that the Senator staked out a stance on the ‘principle principle,’ their cutesy way of saying that you have to admire someone who stands for something, even if you disagree.

Senator Paul was filibustering against the nomination of John Brennan, no kin of this old Judge. His complaint focused on Brennan’s support for the Holder defined authority of the President to dispatch deadly drones domestically.

The issue? When can the President order a hit on an American Citizen on American soil?

That issue ought to be a slam dunk question on a first year law student’s Criminal Law exam.

The President can order a hit when, and only when a police officer would be justified in shooting someone.

You can’t kill a perp for planning a crime. You can’t even kill him for making preparations.

Of course, once he starts to shoot, he is fair game.

But a preemptive strike is always a dicey business, whether the target is a nation or putative criminal.

The catch phrase of the day is “enemy combatant.” That’s what makes it O.K. to kill a guy who is wearing the uniform of the other country.

Even there, you are supposed to play by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules.

When the enemy is a rag tag army, without uniforms and without a fortress, identifying an enemy combatant will depend on what he is doing or attempting to do.

An American citizen who gives aid and comfort to the enemy is guilty of treason and can be sentenced to death upon conviction, provided the conviction is based upon a confession in open court or the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act.

That’s what the constitution says. Nothing there about a “high government official” identifying someone who is thought to present an imminent threat.

What determines the difference between a political enemy and a military enemy? Just when does opposition become combat?

Does hanging the President of the United States in effigy earn someone a place on the executive kill list? Does joining an organization that advocates the overthrow of the federal government forfeit a citizen’s constitutional rights?

No doubt in all of this debate some folks will point to Abraham Lincoln and insist that Old Abe authorized the killing of lots of Americans on American soil.

The Confederates adopted a constitution and elected a President and Congress. They believed that they were a separate nation at war with the United States.

Lincoln never saw it that way. To him, they were rebels. Surely he authorized and sanctioned the killing of those who took up arms against the Union.

But would he have commissioned an assassin to murder Jefferson Davis?

Or would he have authorized a drone attack to level Davis’s home and everyone in it?

I doubt it.

THE PEOPLE’S CONGRESS

The Congress of the United States enjoys a popular approval rating of about 9%.

Which means that nine out of ten Americans do not feel properly represented in the legislative halls of our nation.

Almost sixty years ago, I was the Republican nominee for the United States Congress in the old fifteenth district of Michigan, a slice of the west side of Detroit.

It was a special election to fill a vacancy. There was a newspaper strike during that campaign. Only a fraction of the voters showed up.

I was 26 years old. My Democratic opponent was 29. He won in a walk. His name was John Dingell.

That was in 1955. John Dingell is still in Congress. His 58 year tenure in office is a record. He is the longest serving Member of the House in the history of the nation.

I like John. Always did. He’s a good old boy who takes care of his constituents and sticks by his Rooseveltian liberal principles.

But unhappily, Dingell has become the poster boy for entrenched politicians.

The old fifteenth district is no more. But Dingell survived, and was reelected to represent the new 12th district which stretches in a tortured bit of gerrymandering from Dearborn to Ann Arbor.

The quintessential career politician, Dingell has overseen the reapportioning of his district every ten years to maintain the ethnic and political majorities that have assured his continuation in office.

Now 86 years of age, Dingell is hardly the kind of Representative envisioned by the Founders. He is not likely to knock on anyone’s door or to be an active presence in the communities he represents.

To the three quarters of a million people in his district, Dingell is a distant, largely unknown entity. A Democrat. An incumbent. A politician. Somebody who lives and works in Washington, D.C., cavorts with lobbyists, votes himself benefits, and votes the Party line.

What is missing is the relationship between the representative and the represented.

What is missing is a sense of community, and the conviction that there is a member of Congress who is a part of the community he or she speaks for.

The original scheme of the federal constitution would have assured that Representatives in the Congress would speak for no more than 50,000 people.

If that ratio were in force today, the House of Representatives would be composed of over six thousand people.

Impossible? Impractical? Not necessarily.

Maybe it’s time for a two-tiered House of Representatives in the United States Congress.

Start with 435 seats in the House. That’s what it has been for over a century. There’s a lot of emotional capital and historical baggage in the Capitol Building.

But add this: in every Congressional district there could be a number of subdivisions, call them communities, ridings, wards, whatever. These sub-districts would each contain approximately 50,000 people.

Each sub-district would elect one Congressional Representative every two years.

Each Congressional District would have around 15 of these sub-districts. The Representatives would have to be residents of the sub-district in which they are elected. They would have offices in the district. They would receive a compensation equal to a private in the army.

Every two years, before the convening of a new Congress the Congressional Representatives in each District would designate one of their number to attend sessions of Congress in the Capitol. He or She would receive no additional compensation, but expenses of travel and lodging could be reimbursed.

The Congressional Representative designated to attend sessions of the Congress would be known as a Member of Congress. Members of Congress could be recalled by a vote of two thirds of the Congressional Representatives in the district.

There are many details which would have to be addressed, but the concept of a two-tiered House of Representatives deserves serious consideration.

PRESERVING THE REPUBLIC

It may seem a little blasphemous, but doggone it, the Father of the Constitution screwed up.

James Madison wrote the first ten amendments, which came to be known as the Bill of Rights.

Actually, there were twelve amendments, but the first two weren’t adopted. At least not right away. Number Two sat there for a couple hundred years until a college student in Texas dug it up and got it ratified as the 27th Amendment. It’s the one that says Congress can’t raise their own salaries during their term of office.

But the original First Amendment never did get adopted. Here’s what it says:

After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor "more" than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

This was where Madison, or his scrivener got confused. When the population got to 3 million, there would be one hundred Representatives, one for every 30,000 people.

But as soon as the population got to be three million and one, there was supposed to be not less than one hundred representatives, but not MORE than one for every 40,000 people.

Sorry, Mr. Madison. It can’t be both. One hundred Representatives IS more than one for every 40,000 people, until the population gets up to four million.

OK, so Madison goofed on phase two. But phase three makes sense. It says that once the population gets to eight million, so that a ratio of one to 40,000 produces a House of Representatives with 200 hundred seats, that number – 200 members – becomes one measure of the minimum size of the House.

The other measure? One for every 50,000 people. So as the population grew from eight to ten million, the House would stay at 200 members. After ten million, the House would have one member for every 50,000 people.

Of course, that amendment never was adopted. The size of the House was left to the Congress and it changed many times over the years until in 1911 a law was enacted specifying that the House of Representatives would have 435 members. Period.

In 1912 the population was around 95 million. Which meant one Representative for every 218,390 people. With today’s 330 million Americans, that’s one Congressman for every 758,620.

And we complain about how much money they raise and spend to get elected and reelected!

No wonder Congress has lost the faith and respect of the American people. They aren’t our neighbors. They don’t come around knocking on our doors. They don’t live in our town

They are distant, detached politicians. In Washington, D.C. Inside the Beltway.

They come to us, if at all, on TV or in bulk mail.

So what can be done about it?

There are lots of ideas being floated on the Internet. Term limits. Restrictions on Congressional compensation and benefits. Recall petitions.

None of them address the real problem that in a Republic, the people must be represented by officials they know and trust. Distant untouchable celebrities won’t do.

One to every 50,000 is about as far as we should have to go.

Don’t scoff. There’s a way to do it. Stay tuned.

ANOTHER VOICE

Met an interesting fellow a week or so ago. Name is Andrew Joppa. He is a Viet Nam vet, a retired college professor and a defender of the United States Constitution.

The Professor lives in Naples, where he is active in an organization called The Council for Constitutional Principles.

I met him through the good offices of my dear friend and golfing buddy Frank Harris, who spends his winters in Naples and his summers at Birchwood Farms in Michigan.

Joppa is a fiery orator. See a sample below.

He very candidly confesses that until recently he was among those defenders of the constitution who are skeptical about an Article V Amendments Convention. Like many on the far left and the far right, Joppa feared that a convention would somehow “run away” and do violence to our founding document.

Whether it’s free speech, freedom of religion or the right to bear arms, Americans are so possessive of their rights under the federal constitution, that they literally refuse to listen to any suggestion that a convention might be necessary and useful.

Forget about the fact that nobody wants to repeal the bill of rights or mess with any one of them.

Forget about the fact that no proposal which comes out of a convention would need to be ratified by 38 states.

Forget about the fact that only 9% of the American people have confidence in the United States Congress.

The very people who don’t trust the politicians, who complain about the mess in Washington, who crab about lobbyists and public debt and interminable wars and office holders who pay no attention to their oaths to support the constitution, turn their backs on the obvious remedy the Founders provided: a convention under Article V.

Happily, Professor Joppa has come around to realize that Article V is a blessing, and he speaks cogently and passionately on the subject.

I welcome him to the Cause. America needs his enthusiasm and vigor.

Still, I have to wonder.

I have been speaking and writing on this subject for more than thirty years.

I have pretty much walked down every road that beckons our citizens to work for the calling of an Article V Amendments Convention.

And I guess I have become a little jaded.

The function of a constitution is to set down the rules of the game of governance. The purpose of an Article V Amendments Convention is to suggest changes in those rules.

Is it any wonder that the people who have come to power under the existing rules don’t want to see any of those rules changed?

Is it any wonder that Congressmen don’t want to make the House of Representatives more representative of the American people?

Is it any wonder that the Senators aren’t interested in making the United States Senate more representative of the fifty states and less beholden to the powers that be within the Beltway?

Is it any wonder that judges who have received political appointments with lifetime tenure aren’t interested in changing the way judges are chosen or how long they serve?

Professor Joppa and others hope to create a popular groundswell which will induce state legislators to demand a convention.

I wish them well, but my guess is that we will never have a convention if we wait for politicians to act.

The People have a right to an Article V convention. They don't need anyone's permission.

Thomas Jefferson said it very well: When in the course of human events...

http://vimeo.com/channels/marcoislandtelevision#/channels/marcoislandtelevision/59031294

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY POLITICS

Macbeth murders King Duncan, and becomes the King of Scotland.
Before the final curtain, MacDuff has beheaded Macbeth and succeeded to the throne.
No need for term limits back then. Indeed killing people has a long and storied history in the politics of human governance.
Louis XVI, Benito Mussolini, and Muammar Gaddafi are all rather well known examples of leaders mortally removed from office by their constituents.
Some victims, like Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy are seen as martyrs. Many others are hardly noticed.
Fifteen political leaders were assassinated in the United States in the 19th century.
Seventeen more, including John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, were murdered in the 20th century.
We’re off to a strong start in the twenty-first century.Five American politicians have been killed in the first decade:
Derwin Brown, a Georgia Sheriff-Elect, murdered on orders of the man he defeated.
James Davis, New York City Councilman, Bill Gwatney, Chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party, Mike Swoboda, Mayor of Kirkwood, Missouri, and John Thorton, the Mayor of Washington Park, Illinois.
All condemned to death for the crime of aspiring to public service.
Of course voting with guns and knives goes both ways. Bashar al-Assad has reputedly slaughtered tens of thousands of his constituents in a frantic effort to stay in office.
There is a substantial body of literature in the United States which presumes that the Counter Intelligence Agency, popularly known as the CIA, and frequently dubbed “the company” is, from time to time, expected to ‘eliminate’ dangerous enemies of the nation.
Matt Damon as Jason Bourne romps through a series of CIA shoot ups; Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson and the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, get in their licks with AK47’s , and the peace and prosperity of the land is saved from the bad guys. Again.
My predecessor as Chief Justice of Michigan, a folksy Dutchman, used to say that the first issue in every murder trial is, “Should the deceased have went?”
No doubt, in the court of public opinion, the moral dimension of homicide is determined in just about that way.
Far too many Americans believe that the President of the United States has the power of life and death. His writ runs around the world, wherever a drone can land.
Osama bin Laden had it coming. The Navy Seals are heroes. The President is applauded on both sides of the aisle. He has taught those al-Qaeda guys a lesson.
Now we don’t have to worry about them any more. Do we?
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki. The father was killed in Yemen by an American drone. An American citizen who reputedly renounced his citizenship, the father was known to be an advisor to Nidal Hasan, who slaughtered a dozen Americans at Fort Hood.
The son, a sixteen year old American citizen had gone to Yemen trying to find his father. He was killed by another drone two weeks after his father.
Former White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs defended the killing by saying that the boy should have had a more responsible father.
Even the mainstream Washington Post has reported that the administration has a secret ‘kill list.’ Too many Americans are content to think that when someone is killed by a drone, “they must have had it coming, or we wouldn’t have killed them.”
I cannot subscribe to that kind of thinking.
I suggest that it is time for a national debate on the issue of Presidential powers.
Does the President of the United States have the power of life and death? Should he have that authority?
It is campy to say that ‘the buck stops here’ in the Oval Office. But how is it that the buck ever gets there in the first place? Who recommends names for the kill list? And why?
I would endorse a constitutional amendment like this:
Except in the prosecution of a war duly declared by the Congress, the President shall not order nor authorize the killing of any human being without the prior advice and consent of the Senate.
If you disagree, I invite you to tell us just who you think the President can kill and why.