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i hate to be the one to break it to an eminent historian such as yourself, but there were only 37 states in 1868. if you take out all 11 confederate states, the amendment, much like yourself, fails.
I hate to be the one to break to to an eminent Constitutional law scholar such as yourself - but It doesn't matter. If you take the view that the 11 confederate states' ratifications didn't count, then the ratifications of the 13 states that were admitted later would have caused the amendment to be ratified.
There were only 13 states when the 27th amendment was proposed in 1789 - it was ratified in 1992 when at least 3/4's of the number of states at the time (38 of 50) had ratified the amendment.
except the 14th was ratified in 1868, justice frankfurter.
have an adult explain the difference to you.
I hate to be the one to break to to an eminent Constitutional law scholar such as yourself - but It doesn't matter. If you take the view that the 11 confederate states' ratifications didn't count, then the ratifications of the 13 states that were admitted later would have caused the amendment to be ratified.
There were only 13 states when the 27th amendment was proposed in 1789 - it was ratified in 1992 when at least 3/4's of the number of states at the time (38 of 50) had ratified the amendment.
except the 14th was ratified in 1868, justice frankfurter.
have an adult explain the difference to you.
Yes, but if you had bothered to read the thread, you'd know I was responding to JB's claim that it wasn't. You have trouble following things, don't you?
JB claims the 11 confederate states' ratifications were not valid, due to them being forced to ratify the 14th. My point was that even if the 14th was illegal due to this, by present day time, more than 3/4 of all the states - even discounting all the former confederate states - have ratified it.
except the 14th was ratified in 1868, justice frankfurter.
have an adult explain the difference to you.
Yes, but if you had bothered to read the thread, you'd know I was responding to JB's claim that it wasn't. You have trouble following things, don't you?
JB claims the 11 confederate states' ratifications were not valid, due to them being forced to ratify the 14th. My point was that even if the 14th was illegal due to this, by present day time, more than 3/4 of all the states - even discounting all the former confederate states - have ratified it.
except that once the amendment is deemed ratified, there is no further voting, so once again, you fail.
Yes, but if you had bothered to read the thread, you'd know I was responding to JB's claim that it wasn't. You have trouble following things, don't you?
JB claims the 11 confederate states' ratifications were not valid, due to them being forced to ratify the 14th. My point was that even if the 14th was illegal due to this, by present day time, more than 3/4 of all the states - even discounting all the former confederate states - have ratified it.
except that once the amendment is deemed ratified, there is no further voting, so once again, you fail.
But if JB's argument is correct - that it wasn't legally ratified in 1868 - then it wasn't legally "deemed" ratified either. Stop being a fucking moron.
I'm all for #4.
We need term limits badly.
If you're going to butt into someone else's conversation, you might want to stop and think what the conversation is about.except that once the amendment is deemed ratified, there is no further voting, so once again, you fail.
But if JB's argument is correct - that it wasn't legally ratified in 1868 - then it wasn't legally "deemed" ratified either. Stop being a fucking moron.
take it up with JB, and stop whiining.
I'm all for #4.
We need term limits badly.
that is what the ballot box is for....
forcing experienced productive poltiticians out off office only serves to create a group of elected officials that have no experience and no clue what they are doing.....california's legislature is a classic example of this and the results have been a big mess.....
IMHO, the reason our Constitution never set term limits was that they never invisioned professional politicians in lieu of citizens doing their patrotic duty to serve for a short time and thought that term limits would be determined thru the election process.
I agree
you have term limits....its called voting the guy out....
1) Americans are too stupid to have a free Republic
2)After 18 or 24 years in office, people have too many ties to big business and the media to allow for truly free campaigns and elections. Term limits help limit such corruption and prevent such entrenchment, which is why they were put in place regarding the presidency
I hate to be the one to break to to an eminent Constitutional law scholar such as yourself - but It doesn't matter. If you take the view that the 11 confederate states' ratifications didn't count, then the ratifications of the 13 states that were admitted later would have caused the amendment to be ratified.
There were only 13 states when the 27th amendment was proposed in 1789 - it was ratified in 1992 when at least 3/4's of the number of states at the time (38 of 50) had ratified the amendment.
The Southern States had already been re-admitted and recognized. They were then effectively kicked out of Congress and recognition of their statehood was basically revoked (they refused to allow them to sit in Congress. There were no laws or acts enacted to make any of this legal) so the amendment could be ratified by the remaining states if needed. They were not seated or recognized again (after the de facto revocation of statehood) until they caved in. All of this is quite illegal. And what did it achieve? It brought us anchor babies and the loss of our national sovereignty and recognition of our own borders.
Oh, and new states don't ratify old amendments. Upon granting of Statehood, the new State adopts the Constitution as it stands at the time of admission
(emphasis added)Nothing exists in a vacuum. If you reduce the experience of the actual member, you increase the power of the congressional and committee staffs How do you deal with that? .All institutional knowledge would be held by the staff. (See Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for what that would look like).
I don't know that increasing staff power gets you where you want to go.
I had not considered that. I'll have to get back to you on that, although I doubt it can be helped
(emphasis added)
I had not considered that. I'll have to get back to you on that, although I doubt it can be helped
In 1912, Congress decided to limit the number of representatives to 435 regardless of population. At the time, the rule was we got one representative for every 250,000 people. I would propose returning to that standard and locking the number of representatives at 1 for every 250,000. At our current population, this would mean our number of representatives would be roughly 1,000.
(Great Britain has 650 members of parliament with less than 100 million people).
An argument could be made that this isn't enough and we should drop the number to 150,000 or 100,000. I think 250,000 is workable.
Increasing the number of representatives would reduce the effect of money in politics. A motivated representative could go and visit door to door all of their constituents. This makes "media buys" less attractive. Granted, this might be different in big cities.
Second, the power of congressional staffs would be reduced because there would be enough Congress critters to do the work themselves.
There are other advantages, but that's a start.
Our country is not a "representative democracy", it is a republic.
I'm all for #4.
We need term limits badly.
Oh, and new states don't ratify old amendments. Upon granting of Statehood, the new State adopts the Constitution as it stands at the time of admission
I'm all for #4.
We need term limits badly.
you have term limits....its called voting the guy out....
In 1912, Congress decided to limit the number of representatives to 435 regardless of population. At the time, the rule was we got one representative for every 250,000 people. I would propose returning to that standard and locking the number of representatives at 1 for every 250,000. At our current population, this would mean our number of representatives would be roughly 1,000.
.
I agree. The House is way too small. Each member represents over half a million constituents (excepting those from single rep small states).
The House's size should be set as the cube root of the population. Now we have about 300,000,000 people, so that's 669 reps.
The increase in their salaries would be paltry compared to the size of our budget - and it would be worth it in the long run.
we also need a new way to do districting. Presently, state legislatures do the districting, which allows the party in power to set up Congressional districts that favor them. Both parties do this. The most recent major debacle I can remember was when the Republicans did it to the Dems in Texas a couple of elections ago - but both parties do this.
Here's an obvious gerrymandering here:
See that line connecting parts of the district? its a fucking river!
We should require that districts not only a) have roughly the same number of people in them each but also b) are drawn in such a way as to minimize the total perimeter of all the districts.
It should be possible to write an algorithm that would do this automatically and completely unbiased. For instance, start with the bottom corner of a state, and fill it in until it has enough people to make one district. Then do the other "corners", then fill everything in from there.
I worry that the added numbers would lengthen voting times in the House and make the problems regarding inefficiency even worse. i fear a House that can reach no decisions. that concern aside, I like the sound of your proposal, as it would limit the authority/power each Rep has. Would extend the basic premise to the Senate, as well- perhaps adding a third Congressman for each State?
Our country is not a "representative democracy", it is a republic.
we the people are responsible for that because of our desire to have someone else pay our way through life by enacting a confiscatory tax syatem.
