Churchill worked in a parliamentary system. Just saying.
 

Sounds like a wonderful way of transferring power from elected officials to unelected bureaucrats... if you think that sort of thing is desirable.
 

"Sounds like a wonderful way of transferring power from elected officials to unelected bureaucrats... if you think that sort of thing is desirable."

We don't need to generalize. Transferring power from a toddler is necessary. A grown-up president wouldn't permit it.
 

Ummm... How do bureaucrats attempting to sabotage the elected POTUS in what Woodward calls “an administrative coup d’etat” remind you of Churchill's quip about democracy as the default best form of government?
 

"bureaucrats attempting to sabotage the elected POTUS"

Let's be clear here, the 'bureaucrat' in question seems to be not a 'deep state' civil service career employee but the President's direct appointee. Also, sabotage and saving your boss (or client) from themselves are not the same thing.
 

Our Founders clearly thought there should be a barrier between the popular will, which was prone to spasmodic fads, and the government located in the idea of a republic where the 'representative' of the people did not just enact the will of the people but instead filtered it through their statesmanship and judgement. With a large segment of the people hell bent on voting in representatives that channel their paranoid rage, perhaps that's the function that's necessary for the bureaucracy to play.
 

Anyone who has worked for a boss knows that sometimes you have to save the boss from his or her own worst impulses. The boss can always fire you, even if you are right and the boss is wrong, but if the boss puts up with it, the subordinate has the only necessary or possible justification -- success.
 

Mr. W:

Our government bureaucracy is a combination of POTUS appointments and a civil service. The White House staff and department heads are part of this bureaucracy.

A subordinate bureaucrat hiding orders to thwart POTUS policy with which he disagrees is indeed sabotaging the POTUS, or engaged in what Woodward described as “an administrative coup d’etat.”

Given their efforts to replace an absolute monarchies with an elected government of separated powers, our Founders would hardly support an absolute bureaucracy riding heard over their new republic.
 

CJ's comment is sound -- there are various methods in the scheme of things that provide a check akin to a spouse who might not have formal power but still has a lot of influence (the old "he's the head, I'm the neck" metaphor in one rom-com). Thus is true in the case of many underlinings. The specific instance aside.

Mr. W.'s comment on the bureaucracy is interesting too. Ultimately, like taxation, bureaucracy is a necessity for a republic, even if we might not be big fans of either in some fashion. A range of basic acts of life rely on a smooth running bureaucracy, one that is not unduly open to interference by political higher-ups.

This of course will be a significant issue in upcoming years in the courts.
 

Also, bureaucracy is intrinsic to any government larger than a tribe (and even then). Stealing a document from Trump's desk is a more extreme example of stuff that happens a lot with any office holder, though in subtler ways. What's telling about that story is not that a "bureaucrat" (actually, a Trump appointee) tried to block a bad policy, it's that *Trump never remembered what he intended to do*.
 

Mark: Also, bureaucracy is intrinsic to any government larger than a tribe (and even then). Stealing a document from Trump's desk is a more extreme example of stuff that happens a lot with any office holder, though in subtler ways.

Agreed.

A bureaucracy is necessary to operate any large organization, but is fundamentally flawed.

POTUS appointment and the Senate approval of the bureaucracy leadership can only mitigate the mischief.

The only sure way to minimize the mischief is to minimize the size and the power of the bureaucracy.
 

The New York Times actually published the anonymous manifesto of an admitted seditionist working with others in the White House to undermine the elected President of the United States:

[M]any of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them...[W]e believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic. That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

While sedition short of armed rebellion is no longer a federal crime, conspiracy to defraud the United States remains very much a felony.

18 U.S. Code § 371 - Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States - If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

The U.S. Department of Justice's United States Attorneys' Manual states in pertinent part: "The general purpose of this part of the statute is to protect governmental functions from frustration and distortion through deceptive practices. Section 371 reaches "any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of Government." Tanner v. United States, 483 U.S. 107, 128 (1987); see Dennis v. United States, 384 U.S. 855 (1966). The "defraud part of section 371 criminalizes any willful impairment of a legitimate function of government, whether or not the improper acts or objective are criminal under another statute." United States v. Tuohey, 867 F.2d 534, 537 (9th Cir. 1989)."

Time for the FBI to go to work.
 

Bart,

These are officials appointed by the democratically-elected President. It's his fault if they are misbehaving. The Buck Stops Here, etc.
 

He only hires the best people!
 

Gerard:

Blaming Trump for the disloyalty of the anonymous seditionist and his co-conspirators is absurd.

Trump is not part of the establishment and knows none of the White House staff outside of his family and a handful of people from his campaign.

The staffer took his position agreeing to serve the elected POTUS and assist him in implementing his policies.

If his conscience keeps him from performing that job, the staffer should resign.

Instead, this cowardly piece of sh_t and his co-conspirators are secretly working to impair, obstruct and defeat the POTUS's lawful orders.

Despite their protests to the contrary, they are the clear and present danger to our representative democracy.

Time for the FBI to go to work.
 

There is a real good chance that it's Pence.
 

Best people!
 

"Despite their protests to the contrary, they are the clear and present danger to our representative democracy."

What democracy? Trump lost by 3 million votes, despite his party's suppressing the vote and Russia's interference with the election. The Electoral College is one of many things that precludes us from calling the U.S. a democracy. Trump's aides are a clear and present danger to rule by a toddler's tantrums, not to democracy.

 

Despite the general tenor of so many of the comments to that essay, (It being the NYT, after all.) the "readers' picks" comments mostly make the same point: This guy, if real, is part of a criminal conspiracy, and even if he genuinely thinks he's doing the right thing, he's undermining democracy.

He wasn't elected President, Trump was. My fondest hope is that he and his co-conspirators are found, prosecuted, and end up getting daylight piped in on alternate Tuesdays.

Oh, and note that he says they rejected using the 25th amendment to 'avoid a constitutional crisis'. More like, they avoided it because they're a tiny minority within the administration. Might not even be cabinet officials, just flunkies.
 

This is not on point, but, right after I posted my 5:13 AM comment arguing that the U.S. is not a democracy, I read this at samefacts.com: "First, as I show in this chart [hyperlinked], Republican Senators represent less than 44% of the population of the fifty states. And, of course, those senators represent an even lower percentage of the U.S. population since neither Puerto Rico, with a population greater than twenty-one of those states, nor the District of Columbia, with a population greater than two of those states, have a vote in the U.S. Senate."
 

Ah, the good old fantasy based community, Patient Zero for TDS. I drop by there occasionally to monitor their descent into madness. Used to comment there, until Kleiman banned me for disagreeing with him too often. Then went mad and deleted most of the archived comments trying to retroactively erase the fact that I'd been commenting there.

No, the US isn't a democracy, it's a democratic republic. Yeah, a cliche, but still true.

Fair complaint about Puerto Rico, that hangover from our experiment with empire. We should cut them loose. And D.C. was deliberately not a state for good reason, it was intended as a kind of isolation ward for the capital, to keep it from infecting state politics. Didn't work, as Virginia and Maryland can tell you, but good try. Retrocission is the answer there.

But since the Democrats no more represent unrepresented areas than the Republicans do, they really should be omitted from an oranges to oranges comparison.
 

Brett, I assume that by "democratic republic," you mean that we have a representative rather than a direct democracy. But a Senate that gives the same number of votes to California and Wyoming, despite California's having 67 times the population, is hardly representative or democratic. Neither is a government with a Supreme Court that allows corporations to buy elections and states to engage in partisan and racial gerrymandering and otherwise suppress non-white votes.
 

"But a Senate that gives the same number of votes to California and Wyoming, despite California's having 67 times the population, is hardly representative or democratic."

This is true: The objective wasn't to create a pure democracy, it was to limit the damage democracy can do, without creating a dictatorship in the process.

California is a populous state which is way off the median for the country, ideologically. Just because Democrats have managed to turn California into a one party state doesn't imply that they should get to boss Wyoming around.

Mind, neither should Wyoming get to boss California around, either.

The Constitution was only meant to give to the federal government power over those things which absolutely had to be handled at a federal level: Foreign policy, war, creating a federation wide free trade zone. And those things were only to be done with the consent of a well distributed majority, because the federal government is the government of a federation, and federations are not supposed to be operated for the benefit of one part of the federation, to the detriment of the rest.

Even if it is a populous part.

Your complaint is that we're not a pure democracy. But turning us into a pure democracy would be a recipe for civil war.

" Neither is a government with a Supreme Court that allows corporations to buy elections "

Corporations like the Washington Post or New York Times?
 

Perhaps California ought to split up into 67 states.

The current inequity has nothing to do with ideology.
 

No, the inequality has nothing to do with ideology, but the complaints about it have everything to do with ideology: If California wasn't ideologically distinct from most of the country, nobody would give a fart about the inequality.
 

Mind, neither should Wyoming get to boss California around, either.

But the Senate does let Wyoming voters boss California voters around. More precisely voters in Wyoming and any other state, no matter how small, get to outvote Californians in the Senate. That's ridiculous.

California is a populous state which is way off the median for the country, ideologically.

California has no ideology whatsoever, being merely a land area defined by its borders and the Pacific. By definition there will always be people in the country who are off the median ideologically. There is no sensible reason why they should be punished because so many live in one state. After all, the states of AL, MS, LA, and AR also constitute a land area, defined by some borders and the Gulf, which area "is way off the median for the country, ideologically." This area has a population less than half of California's, yet gets eight times the representation in the Senate.

Nothing you can say can justify this irrationality.

Your complaint is that we're not a pure democracy.

Read again, Brett. His complaint is that we are not a representative democracy, because our way of allocating representatives is irrational.
 

"conspiracy to defraud the United States remains very much a felony"

This, of course, has never been brought against an appointee for what is, at worst, insubordination, but against people entering into bribes of officials, failing to report things as required by federal law, etc.,

Besides, the FBI is a bit busy right now ferreting out all the literal foreign agents of a hostile power in the administration.
 

Stealing documents from the President's desk, if it really happened, goes somewhat beyond simple insubordination, which is just refusing to obey an order.


 

Brett, in finding California ideologically distinct from most of the country, you must be viewing the country as a group of states rather than as a group of people. There are more red states than blue states, which enables the Republicans to control all three branches of government. But the Democrats receive more votes for the President, the Senate, and the House. I don't believe, as Sarah Palin does, in calling some people "real" Americans, but if I were to do so, the "real" Americans would be urban people in blue states.
 

"neither should Wyoming get to boss California around"

But they do. Blocking the passage of laws thought necessary is just as bad as passing them when thought not so (in fact, the DOI expresses this).

And it's not that the people of California should get to boss the people of Wyoming, it's that a majority of the people in the US should get to be the boss, wherever they may locate themselves.
 

"California has no ideology whatsoever, being merely a land area defined by its borders and the Pacific."

Wow, talk about tendentious. Of course, I wasn't speaking of the land area of California, but rather its electorate.

I agree that neither California should rule over Wyoming, nor Wyoming over California. The problem here, though, is not the disparity in population, the House is intended to represent on the basis of population, the Senate on the basis of state, in order that legislation shall not pass unless it is both absolutely popular AND not merely of local appeal.

The problem is that the federal government has usurped huge powers beyond what it is supposed to be exercising. And thus intrudes into what are properly state matters.

We need more subsidarity, a return to the central government being run as a federation which only handles what MUST be centralized, not as a nation, which takes on anything it cares about, whether inherently local or not.
 

Stealing implies the person in question was not authorized to handle the papers, which is almost certainly false.

It's interesting that Brett and Bart have been carrying on about 'weaponizing' law enforcement and a too vigorous legal system, but they would criminalize any instance of a VP of a company who quietly removed a memo from the desk of the CEO.

The proper response to this kind of thing would be to fire the individual.
 

"We need more subsidarity, a return to the central government being run as a federation which only handles what MUST be centralized"

But Brett and other conservatives don't believe a word of that.

They try federalizing abortion law (the House's '20 week' bill).

They want gun control and affirmative action policy federalized.

They want state and local officials to be commandeered to enforce federal immigration law.

At the state level they want state governments to block everything from local efforts to move Confederate statuary to bans on discrimination to bans on fracking.


 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

"But they do. Blocking the passage of laws thought necessary is just as bad as passing them when thought not so (in fact, the DOI expresses this)."

And, here we get to the core complaint: Wyoming is oppressing California by not letting California oppress Wyoming!

The point of the House is to propose legislation which has popular support, the point of the Senate is to kill legislation where that popular support is only local. The Senate is actually functioning as it's supposed to here, your objection is that regional majorities SHOULD be able to rule over the entire country.
 

"Stealing implies the person in question was not authorized to handle the papers, which is almost certainly false."

An accountant is authorized to handle your money, embezzlement is still a crime. Being authorized to handle the Presidents papers scarcely implies being authorized to steal them.

Of topic, I just found out what the supposed "white power gesture" at the Kavanaugh hearing was. The "OK" gesture! Apparently 4chan pranked the left into thinking it was a symbol of white power.

Hilarious, I can see why the news accounts just described it as a "white power" gesture, rather than actually showing us what gesture was used.
 

BD: "Despite their protests to the contrary, they are the clear and present danger to our representative democracy."

Henry: What democracy? Trump lost by 3 million votes...

Representative democracy.

To ensure the POTUS earns the votes of a cross section of our republic, not just a handful of large urban states on the ends, states with a majority of the population elect our POTUS. The system is a combination of population and geography.
 

"The Senate is actually functioning as it's supposed to here."

In 1787, no state had anything approaching 67 times the population of another state. Assuming for the sake of argument that the non-democratic aspect of the Senate is a good thing, one can have too much of a good thing.
 

The complexities of "democracy" in a constitutional republic is duly noted and perhaps when the courts strike down laws in ways a person disagrees with, there won't be a simplistic criticism that the supporters of the action don't care about "democracy."

I speak totally hypothetically. The term is used loosely, which is fine up to a point, since that is how words are used regularly. But, one should try to be somewhat consistent, and when talking about things here sometimes it pays to be somewhat careful. Plus, it's fine to realize simplistic 50%+1 democracy isn't the way to go while also noting that the alternatives might go too far. Thus, "democracy" as a general thing would require some basic parity principle based on population.

Federalist, e.g., argued it was basically insane that Rhode Island by its lonesome had the power to block amending the Articles of Confederation. Thus, supporting ratification by a mere supermajority. The concern that Wyoming and California both has two senators would also be something Madison and others of his ilk would understand given he wanted the Senate to be broken down (at least in state coalitions; so in some sense Wyoming still comes out ahead) per capita. OTOH, Madison et. al. didn't just want simple democracy, and set up various mechanisms to deal with that.

As a pitcher's wife* noted recently, states are there for a reason, but there is a lot of room to use states and not have all of the things in place now. But, apparently, if Madison got his wish, the Senate wouldn't actually be able to do its job. At least, so seems to follow from some remarks. Madison et. al. can also explain how a per capita division of the Senate need not result in "regional majorities ruling over the entire country," there being various checks on that too.

OTOH, there at some point "majorities" ruling is what democracy is about. Again, we don't have a simple democracy, but the word is in there somewhere.

---

* It is September ... the playoff push is in earnest. Plus, appeals to Madison only takes us so far. What's so special about that guy?
 

"Wyoming is oppressing California by not letting California oppress Wyoming! "

The Declaration of Independence recognized that tyranny can exist as much from an undemocratic blocking of laws as from an undemocratic making of laws.

"He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws..." Etc.

"your objection is that regional majorities SHOULD be able to rule over the entire country."

Uh, yeah. I think majorities, *wherever they live in the nation,* should have the final say in our federal government. Otherwise we're letting land trump people, which is silly. Per the DOI again, government is legitimized by the consent of the governed, and that doesn't refer to land, but people.
 

"An accountant is authorized to handle your money, embezzlement is still a crime. Being authorized to handle the Presidents papers scarcely implies being authorized to steal them."

This is of course not embezzlement, and your use of the word 'steal' just begs the very question.

Do you really think that every subordinate in every office around the country is committing, what, larceny (?) if they remove a report (that they may have had some hand in creating) from their superior's desk? Who was complaining about over-criminilization recently?

If someone took something off the boss' desk without permission, the boss should fire them. This isn't a legal matter.
 

Brett: "We need more subsidarity, a return to the central government being run as a federation which only handles what MUST be centralized"

Mr. W: But Brett and other conservatives don't believe a word of that. They try federalizing abortion law (the House's '20 week' bill).

By enacting the 14A, we agreed to nationalize the protection of our privileges and immunities as citizens.

Right to life.

They want gun control and affirmative action policy federalized.

Right to keep and bear arms and equal protection of our laws.

They want state and local officials to be commandeered to enforce federal immigration law.

When? The argument was whether states and localities are allowed to enforce federal immigration law when the elected POTUS refuses to do so.

At the state level they want state governments to block everything from local efforts to move Confederate statuary to bans on discrimination to bans on fracking.

States are the lowest level of sovereign government in our federal system. Local government exists at the pleasure of the states.
 

Mr. W: If someone took something off the boss' desk without permission, the boss should fire them. This isn't a legal matter.

When the purpose and effect is to impair, obstruct or defeat the lawful function of any department of Government, then the act is a felony crime.
 

"And D.C. was deliberately not a state for good reason, it was intended as a kind of isolation ward for the capital, to keep it from infecting state politics."

The reason was exactly opposite to this: it was to prevent the states from interfering with the federal government.

As for "subsidiarity", that's a word which appears nowhere in the Constitution. Nor is there any requirement (or theory) which supports the idea of "not merely local appeal" as applied to states. Madison's argument in Federalist 10 was that an extended republic would assure (a) a larger population of voters; and (b) widespread support by *individuals*. The fact that the Dems regularly receive more votes than the Rs nationwide therefore satisfies both criteria. And while I won't go through it again, I've pointed out before that Brett's supposed "widespread distribution" criterion is incoherent. And, as others have already noted, applied in a partisan fashion.


Finally, the point of the Senate was NOT to "kill legislation which is local". The point of the Senate was to give democratically -- the distinction between "republic" and "democracy" is nonexistent, as Gene Volokh has pointed out on multiple occasions -- unjustified power to small population states. There was no theory backing that; it was a power grab. And the states which demanded it traded support for slavery in order to get it. Noble, that.
 

Mr. W: Per the DOI again, government is legitimized by the consent of the governed, and that doesn't refer to land, but people.

Absent the absolute bureaucracy, our system requires the representative consent of a super majority of the governed to exercise government power.
 

"The point of the Senate was to give democratically ... unjustified power to small population states. There was no theory backing that; it was a power grab. And the states which demanded it traded support for slavery in order to get it. Noble, that."

I am not clear as to "traded support for slavery." Do you mean that small states in the North agreed to the pro-slavery provisions of the Constitution in order to get an undemocratic Senate?
 

"we agreed to nationalize the protection of our privileges and immunities as citizens.

Right to life."

LOL. One thing it's easy to say with confidence is that the writers and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment were not thinking of fetal life rights when they wrote/ratified it (the 'persons born' language is enough to show that).

"Right to keep and bear arms and equal protection of our laws."

non-responsive, this is still federalization of local/state policy

"The argument was whether states and localities are allowed to enforce federal immigration law when the elected POTUS refuses to do so."

No, the current argument is whether state/local law enforcement should expend their time and resources holding arrestees for federal ICE

"Local government exists at the pleasure of the states."

The comment proves my point that conservatives don't believe in subsidiarity. According to the philosophy, it should be the level of government that *most* matters belong to.


 

"then the act is a felony crime"

You can provide no example of anyone being charged for that kind of thing, of course. Because that's not what that law addresses.
 

"our system requires the representative consent of a super majority of the governed to exercise government power"

1. Simply not true. For example, it could be that population is distributed in such a way that it allows both in the Senate and House for 51% of the population's representatives to make all federal law. What it instead does is what Brett claims, it protects areas over majorities at times. As Mark points out, this arrangement was hardly a noble bargain.

2. In either event, you oppose this idea, because it blocks attempts to reign in what you erroneously refer to as an 'absolute' bureaucracy (a demonstrable falsehood as the bureaucracy is and can be blocked in myriad ways).
 

We also need our usual reminder that the LITERAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER of the current President was just convicted in court of numerous counts of violating US law in taking gobs of money from Kremlin friendly foreign interests for his work in subverting democracy in Russia-neighboring Ukraine. Also, the ATTORNEY of the current President just pleaded guilty to violation of law in paying off the latter's porn star mistress. This should be added to the guilty pleas of the former campaign adviser and NATIONAL SECURITY HEAD of this administration and a top adviser. All this set against a backdrop of demonstrable misrepresentations and falsehoods regarding coordination with a hostile foreign government by the AG, son-in-law, etc., of the current President.

The current conservative movement, ditching patriotism for momentary partisan gain (showing their 'true colors') sees the only scandal in this in the looking into it!
 

"Do you mean that small states in the North agreed to the pro-slavery provisions of the Constitution in order to get an undemocratic Senate?"

Yep. That's exactly what they did. I could lay it out in detail, but I'm rushed today because I'm babysitting my grandson and this thread will expire in about 2 hours. If I can squeeze it in I'll give the details.
 

And, here we get to the core complaint: Wyoming is oppressing California by not letting California oppress Wyoming!

That's ridiculous. The relationship is symmetrical. Second, why should 600,000 people be able to block a law favored by 39 million?

Because it "oppresses them?" The assumption that any federal law oppresses someone is insane. Sometimes it's the other way around, and it should hardly be necessary to point out that there are rules to prevent oppression.

The Senate is actually functioning as it's supposed to here, your objection is that regional majorities SHOULD be able to rule over the entire country.

Whereas you want regional minorities to rule. Anyway, I don't think that NY and CA are actually in the same region. It's important to recognize what are and are not legitimate regional interests. The fact that a certain opinion is popular in some part of the country doesn't make it a "regional interest." Large defense budgets, for example, are surely more popular in the South than in the Northeast, but that doesn't make it a "regional interest."

I wasn't speaking of the land area of California, but rather its electorate.

No. You were speaking of the state as some sort of sentient being. Its electorate is made up of people, just like the electorates of the four states I mention. For some unfathomable reason you don't want their opinions to matter.

the Senate on the basis of state, in order that legislation shall not pass unless it is both absolutely popular AND not merely of local appeal.

But if the "local appeal" is in the South you are quite happy with it. Incidentally, a quick look at the 2016 election results suggests that the four states I mentioned, and several other states, are roughly as far to the right of the national median as CA is to the left. Somehow the disparity in representation doesn't bother you.


 

"When the purpose and effect is to impair, obstruct or defeat the lawful function of any department of Government, then the act is a felony crime."

Ah, technically that law says that, if the underlying act is a mere misdemeanor, so is the federal crime.
 

Used to comment there, until Kleiman banned me for disagreeing with him too often.

He banned you for repeatedly posting tendentious, dishonest, and trollish comments.
 

Some of these GM posts are a tad flippant and the last part is an example:

The wisdom of Churchill's comment that "Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried" becomes clearer to me as I get older.

What exactly does this mean? Is it a criticism of the method (not quite "democracy," depending on how that's defined) used to get Trump there or is it that the method was "democratic" but that still results in problems? Or what?

As I noted, Churchill lived in a parliamentary system.
 

" Second, why should 600,000 people be able to block a law favored by 39 million?"

Why should China not rule Tibet? And South Korea? And Thailand? And Japan? They outnumber them! If one person accosts you in an alleyway, it's a mugging. But if two people do it, it's alright, just majority rule, and you're in the wrong if you refuse to hand over your wallet?

Screw majority rule.

600,000 people should be able to block a law favored by 39 million, because the 39 million are living in a different place, under different circumstances, than the 600,000. And because both states joined the federation under these rules, with an explicit guarantee that the rules could not be changed in this regard without their consent.

It really does come down to this: You want to rule over the entire country on the basis of merely local majorities, and are frustrated that the system was set up to prevent this.
 

BD: "we agreed to nationalize the protection of our privileges and immunities as citizens. Right to life."

Mr. W: LOL. One thing it's easy to say with confidence is that the writers and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment were not thinking of fetal life rights when they wrote/ratified it (the 'persons born' language is enough to show that).

Unsurprising since we were not killing nearly a million unborn children at that time.

However, writers and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment were very familiar with the trinity of natural rights life, liberty and property.

BD: "The argument was whether states and localities are allowed to enforce federal immigration law when the elected POTUS refuses to do so."

Mr. W: No, the current argument is whether state/local law enforcement should expend their time and resources holding arrestees for federal ICE

This issue is whether the federal government should subsidize confederate states like CA who forbid their state and local law enforcement from voluntarily assisting ICE in enforcing federal immigration law.

BD: "Local government exists at the pleasure of the states."

Mr. W: The comment proves my point that conservatives don't believe in subsidiarity. According to the philosophy, it should be the level of government that *most* matters belong to.

Actually the level which matters most is self-governance of our own lives.

BD: "then the act is a felony crime"

Mr. W: You can provide no example of anyone being charged for that kind of thing, of course. Because that's not what that law addresses.

Can anyone recall an earlier example of this kind of open sedition against an elected government?

In any case, the acts admitted by this anonymous seditionist perfectly meet to definition of the offense.

BD: "our system requires the representative consent of a super majority of the governed to exercise government power"

Mr. W: 1. Simply not true. For example, it could be that population is distributed in such a way that it allows both in the Senate and House for 51% of the population's representatives to make all federal law.

This is almost impossible and has never occurred in our history. Moreover, you are ignoring the POTUS chosen by a combination of states and population.

In either event, you oppose this idea, because it blocks attempts to reign in what you erroneously refer to as an 'absolute' bureaucracy (a demonstrable falsehood as the bureaucracy is and can be blocked in myriad ways).

What idea? Simple majority rule?

I oppose this idea for the same reason the Founders opposed it - transient majorities should not be imposing government power against their fellow citizens. I very much prefer the Constitution's requirement of effective supermajority rule.


 

Mr. W: We also need our usual reminder that the LITERAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER of the current President was just convicted in court of numerous counts of violating US law in taking gobs of money from Kremlin friendly foreign interests for his work in subverting democracy in Russia-neighboring Ukraine...The current conservative movement, ditching patriotism for momentary partisan gain (showing their 'true colors') sees the only scandal in this in the looking into it!

Your really do not want to go here.

Manafort was convicted of less than half of the charges of failure to make bank disclosures and failing to pay taxes on his earnings long before he worked for the Trump campaign. As the court noted, the only reason the Special Prosecutor prosecuted Manafort was prosecuted was to get at Trump.

The only evidence of a POTUS campaign conspiring with Russian intelligence to subvert the 2016 election is the Clinton campaign paying for oppo-research based entirely on uncorroborated slanders from "Russian intelligence sources," which was improperly and often illegally used by Democrats within our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to investigate and spy on the Trump campaign.

Which side of our political divide is ditching patriotism for partisan gain?
 

"Screw majority rule."

Good to have it on the record!

"You want to rule over the entire country on the basis of merely local majorities"

1. Brett doesn't really believe this at all, as I've argued above he's more than happy to have parts of the country's policies federalized.

2. These are not just 'local majorities,' they are absolute majorities in terms of the nation.
 

It is to be noted that the most populous states of the nation now are California, Texas, Florida and New York. Two are "blue" as a whole, one "red," and one has been something of a purple state. A Madisonian approach would provide each of them more senators than Wyoming and Montana, probably via a larger Senate. How these senators (and the result is likely Texas will have at least one Democratic senator & California one to two Republicans) would vote on a range of issues is open to some debate.

Of course, we won't have simple majority rule. So, e.g., when courts enforce the clear text of the Constitution and protect gays, I won't say they reject "democracy," since that is a complicated idea.
 

Brett: "Screw majority rule."

Mr. W: Good to have it on the record!

Addressing the problem of majority tyranny is well covered in the record of the time of the founding. One of the most substantial problems with the Articles of Confederation was the ability of state legislative majorities to steal from and otherwise abridge the rights of minorities.
 

So you're for federalization, (except when you're not).
 

Glad to have it on the record. "Two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner", and all that: I want self rule, not majority rule.

Majority rule is just another form of oppression, to be preferred to oligarchy only because the majority oppressing the minority is statistically better than the minority oppressing the majority. Subsidiarity wherever possible, and the limiting case of subsidiarity is self-rule. Wherever possible, people should get to make their own decisions, and where not possible, the decisions should be made at the level closest to the individual.

This will not always be possible, part of the country can't go to war without another part, and with freedom of travel in the interior, each state can't have its own immigration policy.

And, constitutionally, a number of issues have been explicitly nationalized, including some civil liberties the left really despises, but they're still there in the Constitution, and the rule of law does not permit local option on the enforcement of constitutional rights.

They are "local" majorities in the sense that they are geographically isolated rather than dispersed. It really does matter whether you're getting 55% of the vote everywhere, or 80% of the vote here, and 45% everywhere else.
 

Mr. W: So you're for federalization, (except when you're not).

Huh?

You are confusing the principle of supermajority rule with that of federal separation of powers.
 

"You want to rule over the entire country on the basis of merely local majorities"

No, you don't.

ut Brett and other conservatives don't believe a word of that.

They try federalizing abortion law (the House's '20 week' bill).

They want gun control and affirmative action policy federalized.

They want state and local officials to be commandeered to enforce federal immigration law.

At the state level they want state governments to block everything from local efforts to move Confederate statuary to bans on discrimination to bans on fracking.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Brett is in his anarchist mode ... where's Shag?

Other times, as he said explicitly, he's more "conservative." But, his comments here have enough caveats ("possible" ... confined by his particular understanding of constitutional text etc.) to not get much out of gotchas like Mr. W.

Giving California, Texas, Florida, N.Y. and so forth more senators [the Senate being specifically flagged in the thread] is not very "geographically isolated." In practice, particularly given constitutional checks (including court review), various things will seriously temper any limited regional majority from ruling. To take but one example, parties require coalitions and compromise. And, in practice, people inhabit regions, and they have various interests that divide.

But, since it is "statistically better," I gather push comes to shove majority rule (with checks) would be worth it vs. the alternative.
 

"However, writers and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment were very familiar with the trinity of natural rights life, liberty and property."

And yet they were textually quite clear about rights for 'persons born.'

"This issue is whether the federal government should subsidize confederate states like CA who forbid their state and local law enforcement from voluntarily assisting ICE in enforcing federal immigration law. "

So the feds should be able to cut all funds from local sheriffs that don't particpate in federal gun control laws? Good to know.

"Actually the level which matters most is self-governance of our own lives. "

And under subsidiarity thats not local?

"Can anyone recall an earlier example of this kind of open sedition against an elected government?"

So you admit, you got nothing here.

"he acts admitted by this anonymous seditionist perfectly meet to definition of the offense."

As are those by Manafort, Flynn, etc., re registering as foreign agents, yet you are on record ridiculing prosecutions relying on literal applications of that statute

"I very much prefer the Constitution's requirement of effective supermajority rule."

No you don't, you want a constitutional convention to change this because it protects the bureaucracy.









 

Ok, here's the short (heh) version of the "Great Compromise":

Roughly speaking, the sequence went like this. Under the Articles of Confederation, the nation had treated slaves as 3/5 of a “person” for a very particular purpose. The Articles required that each state have taxes apportioned to it. As a method of estimating wealth, the Confederation Congress agreed in April 1783 to apportion wealth using population as a proxy for wealth, with slaves treated as 3/5 of a “person”. Putting aside our distaste for the very idea of “owning” property in another human being, this was a rational compromise way to treat the distribution of wealth among the colonies.

On June 11, 1787, the Convention decided that slaves would be counted at the ratio of 3/5 for the entirely different purpose of determining the number of Representatives in Congress. Slaves wouldn’t get to vote for these Representatives, of course. Instead, the owners of slaves would have their political power increased in Congress because the slaveholding states would be treated as having more voters than they actually had: each slave would give 3/5 extra “person”, and those “persons” would be counted in deciding how many Representatives each state would get.

The Northern states understood the impact of the 3/5 clause in this new context, and the smaller Northern states of New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were concerned that Congress would ignore their interests because they wouldn’t have enough representation to be heard effectively. In addition, they worried that future slave states would make the problem worse, especially if those future slave states were geographically larger and therefore able to hold more people. Thus, these smaller Northern states insisted that in the Senate each state must have equal representation. The vote on equal representation taken a bit later on the same day (June 11) failed 5-6, with North Carolina and South Carolina, among others, voting against it.

The issue came up for a vote again on July 2. This time it failed on a 5-5 vote. The missing vote against was that of NY due to the fact that Hamilton had left the Convention. The small states didn’t give up, though, and sometime between July 2 and July 16 a deal was finalized. On July 16 the Convention approved equal representation in the Senate. North Carolina and South Carolina switched their votes, allowing the provision to pass. Thus, we know the deal – or perhaps it was a series of deals – was made with those two states, we just don’t know the exact terms because the deal was made off the floor of the Convention and we don’t have a transcript or other notes.


 

Puzzling out the terms requires some reading between the lines. Key points seem to include further approval of the 3/5 clause, which occurred in the Convention on July 23, and approval of the Northwest Ordinance by the Confederation Congress. That approval took place on July 13, after the Ordinance had been in limbo for 3 years since Jefferson introduced it in 1784. The Northwest Ordinance was important. Under it, the North gained a law prohibiting slavery in the area which later became 5 states (OH, IN, IL, MI, and WI). The South gained a fugitive slave clause essentially identical to the one later inserted in the Constitution itself as Art. IV, Sec. 2, cl. 3, and, implicitly, the right to bring slaves into the area south of the Mississippi River. Three members of the Convention left the Convention and traveled from Philadelphia up to New York in order to vote in favor of the Northwest Ordinance, where it passed unanimously, even the Southern states all voting in favor.

The deal probably also included the power of Congress to regulate interstate and foreign commerce by a majority vote, subject to the qualification that it could not prohibit the importation of slaves for a period of 20 years and could not tax the importation of slaves more than $10 each. Some members of the Convention from the South had wanted trade regulated by a 2/3 vote only, but they consented to majority vote. These provisions were added at the end of August, so consider the following comments from August 22 and August 29:

Gouverneur Morris: “These things may form a bargain among the Northern & Southern States.”

Roger Sherman (CT): “[I]t was better to let the S. States import slaves than to part with [those states], if they made that a sine qua non.”

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (SC): “[I]t was the true interest of the S. States to have no regulation of commerce; but considering the loss brought on the commerce of the Eastern States by the revolution, their liberal [meaning “generous”] conduct towards the views of South Carolina, and the interest the weak Southn. States had in being united with the strong Eastern States, he thought it proper that no fetters should be imposed on the power of making commercial regulations; and that his constituents though prejudiced against the Eastern States, would be reconciled to this liberality--He had himself, he said, prejudices agst the Eastern States before he came here, but would acknowledge that he had found them as liberal and candid as any men whatever.”

Taking all this into account, including much that I’ve omitted here for the sake of brevity, there’s a good inference that a deal was made in which equal representation in the Senate was one bargaining point and concessions regarding slavery another.
 

"Subsidiarity wherever possible, and the limiting case of subsidiarity is self-rule. "

But of course, as I've shown, you don't believe in that at all.
 

Brett's arguments in this thread were expressly rejected by Hamilton, Madison, and others. I'll do this quickly. Here's Madison explaining why it's best to "expand the sphere":

“The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the [geographical area] within which they are placed, the more easily will they [act in] concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere [i.e., make the geographical area larger and include more people] and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other.”

Note 2 important points. First, what Madison wanted was to include more people. Brett is arguing here to include fewer people. Second, Madison's point about the expanded geographic area was because that would include more people. Again, that's the opposite of what Brett is arguing.
 

Yeah, Madison was proven wrong about his dreams of suppressing faction by enlarging the sphere. Almost immediately.

"They want gun control and affirmative action policy federalized."

Gun control and affirmative action policy are already federalized, by virtue of the 2nd and 14th amendments. Like I said above, there's no such thing as local option when it comes to explicit constitutional rights. They're already mandated by the Constitution, it becomes a rule of law issue even if you don't like them.

I think Bart's constitutionalizing of abortion is a bit of a stretch, but not as much of a stretch as Roe was.
 

In the Convention itself, and later in The Federalist, Madison and others pointed out the flaws in the Senate. Starting with Madison:

"He enumerated the objections against an equality of votes in the [Senate], notwithstanding the proportional representation in the [House]. 1. the minority could negative the will of the majority of the people. 2. they could extort measures by making them a condition of their assent to other necessary measures. 3. they could obtrude measures on the majority by virtue of the peculiar powers which would be vested in the Senate. 4. the evil instead of being cured by time, would increase with every new State that should be admitted, as they must all be admitted on the principle of equality.” Similar, in some cases impassioned, remarks can be found on June 28, 29, 30, July 5, 7, and 9.

Also on July 14, James Wilson added that “If equality in the [Senate] was an error that time would correct, he should be less anxious to exclude it … but being a fundamental and a perpetual error, it ought by all means to be avoided. A vice in the Representation, like an error in the first [medicine], must be followed by disease, convulsions, and finally death itself. The justice of the general principle of proportional representation has not … been yet contradicted.”

Alexander Hamilton had previously made a similar point on June 18: “Another destructive ingredient in the [New Jersey] plan is that equality of suffrage which is so much desired by the small States. It is not in human nature that Va. & the large States should consent to it, or if they did that they should long abide by it. It shocks too much the ideas of Justice, and every human feeling. Bad principles in a Government, though slow, are sure in their operation and will gradually destroy it.” Hamilton returned to the topic on June 29:

“But as States are a collection of individual men, which ought we to respect most, the rights of the people composing them, or of the artificial beings resulting from the composition? Nothing could be more preposterous or absurd than to sacrifice the former to the latter. It has been said that if the smaller States renounce their equality, they renounce at the same time their liberty. The truth is it is a contest for power, not for liberty. Will the men composing the small States be less free than those composing the larger? The State of Delaware having 40,000 souls will lose power, if she has 1/10 only of the votes allowed to Pa. having 400,000: but will the people of Del: be less free, if each citizen has an equal vote with each citizen of Pa?”

 

Just to be inclusive, here's Jefferson writing in 1816:

“The question you propose, on equal representation, has become a party one, in which I wish to take no public share. Yet, if it be asked for your own satisfaction only, and not to be quoted before the public, I have no motive to withhold it, and the less from you, as it coincides with your own. At the birth of our republic, I committed that opinion to the world, in the [draft] of a constitution annexed to the "Notes on Virginia," in which a provision was inserted for a representation permanently equal. The infancy of the subject at that moment, and our inexperience of self-government, occasioned gross departures in that [draft] from genuine republican canons. In truth, the abuses of monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that "governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it." Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading principles in them. But experience and reflection have but more and more confirmed me in the particular importance of the equal representation then proposed….

But inequality of representation in both Houses of our legislature, is not the only republican heresy in this first essay of our revolutionary patriots at forming a constitution. For let it be agreed that a government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns (not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city, or small township, but) by representatives chosen by himself, and responsible to him at short periods, and let us bring to the test of this canon every branch of our constitution.

In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by less than half the people [referring to property limitations on voting], and not at all in proportion to those who do choose [many white men, all blacks and women]. The Senate are still more disproportionate….”

 

"Yeah, Madison was proven wrong about his dreams of suppressing faction by enlarging the sphere. Almost immediately."


The problem never has been that Madison was wrong. It was the small states made a power grab which, among other provisions, prevented his idea from ever being implemented.
 

BD: "I very much prefer the Constitution's requirement of effective supermajority rule."

Mr. W: No you don't, you want a constitutional convention to change this because it protects the bureaucracy.

Even if not expressly forbidden by the Constitution's grants of all legislative power to Congress and judicial power to the courts, Congress's delegation of absolute power to the unelected bureaucracy is the antithesis of both majority and supermajority rule.

 

And by the way, it's silly to claim that democracy is "wrong". It might be better, it might be worse, but not "wrong". I will say that minority rule, which Brett supports, is a lot worse.
 

I only support minority rule in the sense that, for most things, I support the right of the minority to tell the majority to bugger off.

As I said, the House, being allocated on the basis of population, advances legislation which has majority support, regardless of where the majority may be found.

The Senate then kills that legislation if the majority is concentrated in one part of the country, rather than well distributed.

The result isn't minority rule, it's limited majority rule, majority rule with a minority veto under some circumstances.

I suggest that, if Democrats are unhappy with this, they leave off working to achieve ever higher percentages of the vote in the places they already rule, and try winning some more votes in places where they're not already in power, instead.