You thinkin' maybe the Founding Fathers weren't as smart as we'd like to think?

[jmowreader]

The Constitution provides a way for a President who's gone off the rails to be removed by another of the branches of government. Similarly, a judge that's departed from expected standards of conduct and decency can be removed by another branch of government. (In both cases it's Congress who does the firing.) But as the Constitution is written, neither the executive nor the judicial branch can remove a Congressman unless the Congressman commits a crime, nor can the other house of Congress.

And right now, the need to remove about forty members of the House of Representatives (who we shall henceforth refer to as "Al Qaeda America&quot before they manage to destroy the world has never been greater.

[redstatebluegirl]

1. They could not have imagined a world full of idiots listening to idiots all day on the radio and TV.

Nor could they imagine the amount of money being used in this day and age to win elections. Can't blame them, they did the best they could.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

3. indeed...

the system they put in place could not foresee the insanity that counts as politics today...

sP

[Turbineguy]

2. Who could have forseen

this crop of morons getting elected? I don't think we can blame the Founding Fathers here.

[Ikonoklast]

9. They thought morons would get voted out of office by their constituents.

Not re-elected.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

4. Actually they did foresee a buncha stupes getting elected,

which is why they put two houses in place, with one of them being rotated only by one third of its membership every election. What they didn't foresee was the debt ceiling law, which allows not just for the shutdown, which is annoying but can be handled, but for total nuclear armageddon re the budget and the credit of the US. Alexander Hamilton would have approved of the 14th Amendment, but not of the debt ceiling law, which seems to be in direct contradiction of the 14th, but finding out would take a Constitutional crisis that would blow up the credit of the US anyway.

[jmowreader]

16. Stupes isn't why there are two houses

The original plan was to have a Congress with one assembly, and a president to approve or veto the bills they wrote. We have two houses because the large states wanted proportional representation and the small states wanted equal representation. The compromise was to create one house along the lines of the large-state proposal, and another along the lines of the small-state plan.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

22. That explains their election by the state legislature in the original,

but as Madison makes clear in Federalist 62, there were other reasons to have a second body:

First. It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust. In this point of view, a senate, as a second branch of the legislative assembly, distinct from, and dividing the power with, a first, must be in all cases a salutary check on the government. It doubles the security to the people, by requiring the concurrence of two distinct bodies in schemes of usurpation or perfidy, where the ambition or corruption of one would otherwise be sufficient. This is a precaution founded on such clear principles, and now so well understood in the United States, that it would be more than superfluous to enlarge on it. I will barely remark, that as the improbability of sinister combinations will be in proportion to the dissimilarity in the genius of the two bodies, it must be politic to distinguish them from each other by every circumstance which will consist with a due harmony in all proper measures, and with the genuine principles of republican government.

Second. The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions. Examples on this subject might be cited without number; and from proceedings within the United States, as well as from the history of other nations. But a position that will not be contradicted, need not be proved. All that need be remarked is, that a body which is to correct this infirmity ought itself to be free from it, and consequently ought to be less numerous. It ought, moreover, to possess great firmness, and consequently ought to hold its authority by a tenure of considerable duration.

In other words, because a single body subject to election once every two years could wind up with a bunch of total demagogues, and some check would be needed on their propensity to do stupid things.

[Phlem]

5. Any set of rules can be fucked with

if one is selfish enough.

As you heard time and time again, Laws are for the unwashed, Millionaires, Billionaires, and the Politically Powerful don't apply.

-p

[Auggie]

6. Dumb post ...

questioning political judgment of over 225 years ago.

[Make7]

7. Maybe they're only three-fifths as smart as we thought... ( n/t )

[FurSure]

25. I'm not sure I quite understand...

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

31. LOL!

Translation: I understand.

[FurSure]

35. LOL!

[Marrah_G]

8. Their world was alot smaller

They were beholden to the people they represented in a more personal way.

[Lifelong Dem]

10. It's a political game

They wouldn't destroy the world. Because they wouldn't survive in a world where the forty are hunted down by a lynch mob for destroying the world.

[baldguy]

20. That cartoon was published 10/2.

The Boner said almost the exact same thing today:

Boehner says U.S. on path to default if Obama won't negotiate

[eShirl]

11. I'm sure they did the best they felt they could. n/t

[Agnosticsherbet]

12. The founding fathers were concerned about kings and setting up an executive branch

that might become like a king.

The peoples house was supposed to be where the rubber of democracy met the republic road. But the document contained a lot of flaws. It included no rights until the bill of rights was used to amen it. Slavery was enshrined in that noble document. The founding fathers did not foresee the real power of parties. They did not set up a method of funding the government in the event that Congress refuses to do its job.

It was a brilliant document for its time, but its time was 213 years ago, give or take.

[BlueToTheBone]

13. I believe that is the job of the electorate.

They are up for re election every 2 years. Go for it!

[GreenStormCloud]

14. What you are really demanding:

You want members of the minority party to be able to remove members of the majority party, at will. And it isn't just 40 members. It takes a majority to do what they are doing. That's 218+.

[jmowreader]

18. Not at all

I would like members of one house to be able to propose, by a two-thirds majority, members of the other house for removal. If the member is impeached by the other body, a two-thirds vote in the Supreme Court would send them home.

It would probably get its greatest use by a party removing its own embarrassments, like Michele Bachmann and Allen West.

The forty members I mentioned refers to the teabagger caucus.

[GreenStormCloud]

32. Sounds reasonable. One question.

What do you do about the people in the district that sent them to Washington? Consider that Congressperson Jones from district 5 is sent home, and in the special election his wife or brother is sent to Washington by some very angry voters.

You are wanting the Tea Party members removed because of their political stance, not because of corruption. You will have to learn to tolerate those of other parties, even the extremists.

However, your proposal could be handy for getting rid of members such as Adam Clayton Powell (several decades ago - drug involvement) or the congressmen caught in Arabscam a couple of decades ago.

[jmowreader]

36. I want the Tea Party members removed because they're destroying the country!

I live in Idaho. Tolerating members of other parties is part of the package when you're not a Republican here. This goes beyond tolerance; to keep the Tea Party from destroying the country we have to give up being Democrats by repealing all the legislation they don't like (and believe me, if we were to repeal Obamacare right now they would find something else they couldn't live with to hold over the president's head).

I want the Tea Party terrorists removed because they are getting ready to destroy the world economy if they don't get everything their little hearts desire.

As to what to do about the people in the district that sent them to Washington...my first inclination is to require the district that sent a removed congressman to do without one until the next scheduled election. I would also suggest that if more than two congressmen from the same state are removed in the same Congress, the entire state be redistricted by the federal government to eliminate gerrymandering. Yes, this would infringe on state sovereignty, but guess what: I didn't have the opportunity to vote for Ted Cruz and he is currently impacting my life. We're not in the America of the 18th Century; things that happen legislatively in one state often impact the lives of people in the other 49.

[GreenStormCloud]

37. You are wanting anybody that disagrees with you politically to be removed.

That is the path to dictatorship.

[Revanchist]

15. They expected the country to be sensible enough

They expected the country to be sensible enough to send sane individual to congress so that they could police their own and get rid of the occasional crackpot. I don't think they ever imagined that the lunatics would be running the asylum.

[treestar]

17. No. They had not way to know what would happen

and were in fact aware of that, and so they made it possible to amend the constitution.

One thing some prior congress should have done is to make a law providing for automatic funding of the government. It's crazy this can happen - unprofessional. The good will of people generally was enough previous to now.

[bhikkhu]

19. Yeah, why weren't they omniscient?

Why would they write a constitution if it weren't capable of dealing with every necessary thing for hundreds of years?

Of course, there's no use blaming guys who've been dead for 200 years, or blaming a document written 200 years ago, for the stupidities of our current situation. If someone travelled back in time and told them about the tea party and so forth, they'd probably laugh it off as an impossible tale, or perhaps say - "we did our part, the rest is up to you guys. Figure it out"..

[gulliver]

21. They had pitchforks, tar and feathers, etc., back then.

You wouldn't have dared to gerrymander so cynically and criminally back then. You would be ridden out of town on a rail—if you were lucky. The founding fathers were classically educated men of honor. It stands to reason that they might not have foreseen the Tea Party and House Republicans.

[GreenStormCloud]

34. But they did dare to Gerrymander back then.

This carton was printed in 1812 after Governor Gerry helped draw a congressional district in Boston to favor his party.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. Actually they were prescient enough to warn against Factions

the term used by them for political parties.

For a bunch bringing back any form of democracy after the last republic fell, (Venice), they did ok. They also were prescient enough to give things like the amendment process. Yes, the document is supposed to be a living document, (Scalia be damned). Hell, once of them even said that we needed to change it in full every generation or so.

IN reality the document served us well, but at this point it's become a sacred document in some quarters, and it needs serious amendments. There is a reason newer democracies no longer use it as a model for anything, but see it as a cute archaic document.

[bluedeathray]

24. No, after such a struggle to establish this nation

Our forefathers failed to plan for a political class that would be actively anti-American, greedy capitalist, and possessing a sense of exceptionalism to the point of cruelty and crime.

Laws are not enough...evidently. Without Constitutional protection, these bastards will rape this planet until it collapses.

[riqster]

26. Their mistake was in not legislating the powers of parties

Indeed, the founders were of many minds on that topic. Because they could not agree, they left it out of the Constitution.

The problem isn't just a random group of incompetent, corrupt idiots: the problem is also the dark money behind them-money that flows from the "republican" party.

[meanit]

27. We didn't get where we are overnight.

There are many checks and balances in the Constitution to prevent lunatics like we have now from getting power, but many of these remedies have been ignored along the way due to greed, bullying, spinelessness, etc.

The founding fathers probably figured that we as a country would have had enough sense to use these remedies long before things got to this point.

Now we have to figure out what to do about these loonies for ourselves.

[NuclearDem]

28. Of course they didn't plan for everything, they went with the best they could come up with

Which is why we need to rewrite parts of it right about now. We're essentially working with 18th century planning, before the dawn of the assault rifle, Internet, and automobile. Some things need to change.

[geek tragedy]

29. Yep. The Constitution is a failure, and we need to replace it with a parliamentary system

if we can't achieve one-party rule over the entire country.

Divided government was always a recipe for this kind of disaster.

[zipplewrath]

30. The Houses were to make their own rules

The guys that wrote the original constitution were in essence, legislators. It was their thought that each body could write their own rules. There are rules for removing individual congress critters, but only by their own bodies.

What you have here is a minority being given control by the majority. Very strange and hard to prevent without losing the protections that minorities need. (And for what it's worth, many of the "founders" would be horrified by what is being done).

[Myrina]

33. They were, but they never expected petulant children to be elected to Congress.

They were forming a government with adults in charge. Thoughtful, contemplative adults.
The exact opposite of what we have now, sadly.

[DevonRex]

38. I think the FF designed a system for the elite. Not for the people. No third party? Blame them.

Hell, they claimed not to like ANY parties. Bullshit. They just made it so that only elite landowners could serve and it'd be damned hard to change anything in government, thus ensuring their power.

Some were really smart. Just not in the way people think. Maybe others weren't smart enough to see through the intent of the rest.