Re: Three strikes you're out! for politicians... yeah we wish!
At 04:00 7/22/95, Craig Hubley wrote:
About two weeks ago, there was some talk in here with regards to holding DC lawmakers crominally liable for passign bad laws. This was followed up with postins pointing out that you can't do that.
Here's something you *can* do:
"Three strikes you're out" for politicians.
Any time the Supreme Court strikes down a law, any politician who has been found to have voted in favor of three such laws is immediately stripped of all offices and rendered ineligible to run for public office ever again, at any level. (The same might apply to those found to have lied to a court
A politician who would trade citizen rights for political gain must be denied the benefits of such a tradeoff. This might prevent the rise of demagogues. Term limits, etc., would of course help as well. It would also give those politicians who vote for 'motherhood' issues like 'protecting kids from the perverts on the Internet' a good reason to think twice about the real issue. If they REALLY believe they are protecting someone, they will still vote in favor. If they are going with the flow to avoid criticism, they'll lose in the end.
My reasoning is that any politician whose laws are consistently struck down should be deemed to lack a fundamental understanding of the rights of the citizens of his/her country or jurisdiction. They are thus a poor guardian of those rights.
You heard it here first.
Craig Hubley
I'd love to see the system described in H. Beam Piper's "A Planet for Texans" implemented. Under that system, all Politicians are BY LAW representing the interests of ALL their constituents. Any constituent who feels that he/she is not being adequately represented (or feels that his/her views/interests are being misrepresented) is by law granted total access to the Politician and may register this disapproval of the Politician's Performance in any way up to and including killing the Politician. If the Politician (or his/her survivors/friends <g>) feel that the constituent used excessive force (such as using a car bomb or a long distance weapon like a rifle as opposed to using a personal weapon such as a hand gun at close range) or force out-of-proportion to the action being protested, they can bring charges in the "Court of Political Justice". In such a trial it is the job of the prosecution (ie: The Politician or Representatives) to prove that the constituent did, in fact, overstep the accepted rules for registering disapproval.
On Sat, 22 Jul 1995, Robert A. Rosenberg wrote:
At 04:00 7/22/95, Craig Hubley wrote:
About two weeks ago, there was some talk in here with regards to holding DC lawmakers crominally liable for passign bad laws. This was followed up with postins pointing out that you can't do that.
Here's something you *can* do:
"Three strikes you're out" for politicians.
Any time the Supreme Court strikes down a law, any politician who has been found to have voted in favor of three such laws is immediately stripped of all offices and rendered ineligible to run for public office ever again, at any level. (The same might apply to those found to have lied to a court
A politician who would trade citizen rights for political gain must be denied the benefits of such a tradeoff. This might prevent the rise of demagogues. Term limits, etc., would of course help as well. It would also give those politicians who vote for 'motherhood' issues like 'protecting kids from the perverts on the Internet' a good reason to think twice about the real issue. If they REALLY believe they are protecting someone, they will still vote in favor. If they are going with the flow to avoid criticism, they'll lose in the end.
My reasoning is that any politician whose laws are consistently struck down should be deemed to lack a fundamental understanding of the rights of the citizens of his/her country or jurisdiction. They are thus a poor guardian of those rights.
You heard it here first.
Craig Hubley
I'd love to see the system described in H. Beam Piper's "A Planet for Texans" implemented. Under that system, all Politicians are BY LAW representing the interests of ALL their constituents. Any constituent who feels that he/she is not being adequately represented (or feels that his/her views/interests are being misrepresented) is by law granted total access to the Politician and may register this disapproval of the Politician's Performance in any way up to and including killing the Politician. If the Politician (or his/her survivors/friends <g>) feel that the constituent used excessive force (such as using a car bomb or a long distance weapon like a rifle as opposed to using a personal weapon such as a hand gun at close range) or force out-of-proportion to the action being protested, they can bring charges in the "Court of Political Justice". In such a trial it is the job of the prosecution (ie: The Politician or Representatives) to prove that the constituent did, in fact, overstep the accepted rules for registering disapproval.
Reminds me of the old Heinlein advice about supplying forceful punctuation after the word "but" in: "Of course, it's none of my business, but...". RAH advises against using excessive force - cutting the offender's throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about ;) -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com 801/534-8857 voicemail 801/460-1883 digital pager Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744@anon.penet.fi Q. What's the trouble with writing an MS-DOS program to emulate Clinton? A. Figuring out what to do with the other 639K of memory.
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