Tag Archives: government

Constitutionally Questionable

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The subheadline lays out the problem:

Refusal of older officeholders to cede stage to younger faces is prompting fresh calls for a limit on how long they can serve

Statutory limits on how long Congressmen and -women can serve in Congress are constitutionally highly questionable. Here’s what Article I, Sections 2 (on Representatives) and 3 (on Senators) of our Constitution says about eligibility to serve in Congress:

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

And

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

Our Constitution places a floor on age, but it places no ceiling on age, nor does it place any limit on the length of service or number of terms an individual may serve. In many venues, it’s possible for lower jurisdictions to tighten standards of higher jurisdictions, but with our Constitution, such efforts have been routinely disallowed under the Supremacy Clause, which unequivocally states, along with Marbury v Madison, that our Constitution is our supreme law, and Congressional statutes are subordinate to it. It’s most likely that imposing an upper age limit would require an Amendment to our Constitution.

In any event, limiting by age for how long a congressman might serve is a decidedly suboptimal solution to this perceived problem. A much better solution is the term limit that was used in our erstwhile Articles of Confederation. That document’s Article V limited a Congressional delegate to three terms out of six, with no bar on serving further in subsequent six term runs.

The Articles were written for a unicameral Congress, but it’s easily adaptable to our present bicameral Congress. This also would require an Amendment to our Constitution, but it would be a better one that makes medical improvements to the abilities of aging citizens irrelevant.

No, and Yes

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NIH director Dr Jay Bhattacharya:

As far as the NIH, we’ve paused every single project that even is anywhere within the vicinity of something that could be gain of function, and the White House is working on a policy…(that) will make it so that it never happens again.
Nowhere in the United States Government will we invest in a project that poses a risk of catastrophic harm to the American people ever again[.]

No. We should continue, and perhaps accelerate, gain of function research across a variety of viruses, and not only those living in animals. We don’t necessarily need the research for our own biological weapons, and such research needs to be done within the most stringent safety protocols. The reasons we should do the research are two, primarily: one is that our enemies are conducting such research; the canonical example being the People’s Republic of China with its efforts that include its lab leak (from incompetent safety execution more than from proximate enmity) of the Wuhan Virus. We need our own gain of function research in order to be better positioned to counter deliberate spreads of successfully weaponized viruses. The need for this is demonstrated by PRC agents recently caught smuggling into our nation a variety of biologic weapons that would poison our nation’s food supply when released.

The other reason is the need to anticipate, understand, and produce effective responses when the inevitable event of another pandemic occurs and threatens national and global economies as well as national and global populations. A short list of examples of this includes the costly and deadly outbreaks of plague, smallpox, Spanish Flu, and the recent Wuhan Virus. All of these were far worse than they could have been had effective remedies been available or more quickly available due to ongoing gain of function research. That gain of function research technologies and methods didn’t exist for most of those cataclysms doesn’t alter the fact that such technologies and methods would have been beneficial then. We have the basics of such technologies and methods today.

I think I can tell you that the appetite for lockdowns in this administration is basically zero. So I don’t think we would have the same kind of approach. …
…
We saw during COVID every single person’s life was affected in some, mostly for the worse. ” …I’ll tell you under my watch, I will never advocate and the NIH will not be advocating for lockdowns ever again.

Yes. The lockdowns not only harmed our economy and isolated adult Americans far too much, they severely damaged our children and not only by losing years of education that still have not been recovered. They also severely damaged our children’s social development, that damage came at ages where our children are their most vulnerable, and in far too many cases the damage will be life-long.

Reapportionment

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There is a flurry of domestic migration from Blue States to other States, usually Red. That could prove costly to the Blue States’ representation in the US House of Representatives.

The left-leaning Brennan Center has taken a look at the Census and finds Democratic-controlled states are likely to lose at least 10 House seats.
If recent trends in population growth and migration continue, the Brennan Center projects that Texas would gain four seats, Florida three, and Georgia, Arizona, Utah, North Carolina, and Idaho one each in the reapportionment after the 2030 Census. California would lose four, and New York two. Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island would give up one apiece.
This would give Southern states 164 House seats, which is 19 more than in the 2000s. The Northeast would have 81 seats, down from 92.

That representation reallocation isn’t all. That’s also a shift of Electoral College votes from Blue States to Red to the tune of 30 votes shifting right.

Which is why the Progressive-Democrats are so shrilly against requiring US citizenship as a criterion for voting in Federal elections, requiring proof of US citizenship in order to get a ballot for Federal elections, and—especially—against excluding non-citizens present in their States from the census count that’s used for apportionment. It’s also why Progressive-Democrats so shrilly push for open US borders and welcoming all comers, including illegal aliens, into their jurisdictions. If they succeed in keeping non-citizens in the apportionment count and blocking Voter ID, that would strongly favor apportionment toward them, even with the ongoing domestic outmigration from those States.

Progressive-Democrats are more interested in their political power than they are in free and fair elections.

“That’s Unconstitutional”

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Many politicians, primarily but not exclusively of the Progressive-Democratic Party, when they decry the actions of President Donald Trump (R) loudly declaim that whatever it is that he’s doing is “unconstitutional.”

It’s instructive that these worthies usually omit to cite the clause of our Constitution that’s supposedly being violated, but when they do cite something, they center their claim on the 10th Amendment.

Here is what that Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Article I, Section 10, lays out specific powers prohibited to the States:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Included in the powers not delegated is this one from Article II, Section 3:

…he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….

Here is what the Supremacy Clause of our Constitution says, from Article VI:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

There is nothing in the supreme Law of the Land  that has been delegated to the States or to the people. That supremacy has been retained by the Federal government, and that supremacy includes actions of Federal law enforcement agencies and their personnel in the course of their enforcement of Federal laws in Progressive-Democrat-run “sanctuary” jurisdictions; the latter’s protestations to the contrary are irrelevant.

No part of a President’s authority or obligation to enforce the Laws are reserved to the States. Nor does the 10th Amendment’s delegations include any State-level authority to block or otherwise interfere with Federal law enforcement actions.

So Much for Liberty

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Contempt for ordinary citizens is the order of the day in the United Kingdom, which has fallen and can’t seem to get up.

[T]he [British] government is moving to allow jury trials for “indictable only” offenses such as murder and “either way” offenses with likely sentences of more than three years in prison. Judge-only “swift” courts will hear cases ranging from burglary and theft to sexual assault and stalking. Judges will also sit without a jury in fraud and financial cases deemed too complex for jurors.

This is…disappointing. It’s also a revival of the 350-year-old Bushell’s Case but with the addendum of eliminating the case’s question altogether. Bushell’s Case was a trial of a couple of government-defined religious miscreants during which the presiding judge refused to accept the jury’s acquittal verdict and jailed the ringleader, Edward Bushell, until he voted for the judge-approved verdict. That case was resolved on appeal in favor of Bushell and British commoners generally, extending as the appeal finally ruled habeas corpus to those commoners as well as the nobility.

Now the British government is moving to go beyond that presiding judge’s position and eliminate juries altogether in a vast number of cases. No juries, no verdicts that run counter to the government’s position.

This revival also is a clear expression of the contempt with which British government men and women hold their subjects: commoners are just too grindingly stupid to understand many kinds of cases, and so they must be led away so their Betters can handle them without any pesky commoner interference.

Juries? We ain’t got no juries. We don’t need no juries! We don’t have to show you any stinkin’ juries!