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My idea to eliminate earmarks that are not in the interest of america (Birthdays) My idea to eliminate earmarks that are not in the interest of america (Birthdays)

08-07-2008 , 04:51 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by STA654
congressional seats being divided by birthday rather than geography = taking away power from state level government?

huh?

I'm not proposing scraping the 10th amendment to the constitution.
Your plan violates Article I Clause III and the 14th Amendment, and that's just off the top of my head (obviously it's never been in front of a court, etc., so caveats apply). I had assumed we were talking some hypothetical scenario where the Constitution doesn't exist or doesn't apply. You shouldn't care too much about steamrolling the 10th Amendment because your plan violates numerous Constitutional provisions anyway.
08-07-2008 , 05:02 PM
Article I Clause III
Quote:
BICAMERALISM
By providing for a National Legislature of two Houses, the Framers, deliberately or adventitiously, served several functions. Examples of both unicameralism and bicameralism abounded. Some of the ancient republics, to which the Framers often repaired for the learning of experience, had two-house legislatures, and the Parliament of Great Britain was based in two social orders, the hereditary aristocracy represented in the House of Lords and the freeholders of the land represented in the House of Commons. A number of state legislatures, following the Revolution, were created unicameral, and the Continental Congress, limited in power as it was, consisted of one house.

From the beginning in the Convention, in the Virginia Plan, a two-house Congress was called for. The Great Compromise, one of the critical decisions leading to a successful completion of the Convention, resolved the dispute about the national legislature by providing for a House of Representatives apportioned on population and a Senate in which the States were equally represented. The first function served, thusly, was federalism. 32 Coextensively important, however, was the separation-of-powers principle served. The legislative power, the Framers both knew and feared, was predominant in a society dependent upon the suffrage of the people, and it was important to have a precaution against the triumph of transient majorities. Hence, the Constitution's requirement that before lawmaking could be carried out bills must be deliberated in two Houses, their Members beholden to different constituencies, was in pursuit of this observation from experience. 33

Events since 1787, of course, have altered both the separation- of-powers and the federalism bases of bicameralism, in particular the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment resulting in the popular election of Senators, so that the differences between the two Chambers are today less pronounced.
good thing 30 million Californias have just as much representation in the senate as 500 000 Wyomingites
08-07-2008 , 05:06 PM
FWIW, I'm not saying you've got a bad idea, but "I'm not proposing scraping the 10th amendment to the constitution" made it sound as if you were holding the Constitution particularly sacrosanct or something. I thought it was just assumed that the Constitution was going to either be ignored or heavily amended anyway to make your plan legal and feasible. I don't think it's ever ended up in front of SCOTUS (because plans like yours have never been seriously proposed) but I think it's pretty clear that Congressional representatives have to be apportioned by state sans wholesale scrapping/amending of the Constitution.
08-07-2008 , 05:07 PM
by the 10th amendment comment I meant I wasn't going to be taking power away from state level government and giving it to the new legislative body.
08-07-2008 , 05:08 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by DVaut1
Your plan violates Article I Clause III and the 14th Amendment, and that's just off the top of my head (obviously it's never been in front of a court, etc., so caveats apply). I had assumed we were talking some hypothetical scenario where the Constitution doesn't exist or doesn't apply. You shouldn't care too much about steamrolling the 10th Amendment because your plan violates numerous Constitutional provisions anyway.
I don't recall the part of his post where he said that we wouldn't have to amend the Constitution to implement this plan. Can you quote it?
08-07-2008 , 05:11 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexM
I don't recall the part of his post where he said that we wouldn't have to amend the Constitution to implement this plan. Can you quote it?
I don't recall where him saying this or not was relevant in any way to what I was saying. Again, enacting this plan would pretty much require a wholesale rewriting of lots of the Constitution anyway, so I thought it odd that there was a serious concern his plan might violate the Tenth Amendment.
08-08-2008 , 06:36 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by pvn
I don't know if you've noticed, but the US is not Japan.
Yes, Japan has a government for the people. While the USA has a government for its legislators and the corporations which sponsor them.

      
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