Three strikes you're out! for politicians... yeah we wish!

[Ed Carp [khijol Sysadmin]]

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 at linux.org, ecarp at netcom.com
801/534-8857 voicemail			801/460-1883 digital pager
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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.