Legislative Process Quotes

Whether we write lyrics or craft legislation, sell homes or teach classes, design spaces or open franchises, prayer is a critical part of the creative process. Don’t just brainstorm; praystorm.

Life Is a Gift from God. We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life -- physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production--in other words, individuality, liberty, property -- this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

It turned out to be a war which, unfortunately for Comrade Pillai, would end almost before it began. Victory was gifted to him wrapped and beribboned, on a silver tray. Only then, when it was too late, and Paradise Pickles slumped softly to the floor without so much as a murmur or even the pretense of resistance, did Comrade Pillai realize that what he really needed was the process of war more than the outcome of victory. War could have been the stallion that he rode, part of, if not all, the way to the Legislative Assembly, whereas victory left him no better off than when he started out. He broke the eggs but burned the omelette.

Tradition is not something constant but the product of a process of selection guided not by reason but by success. It changes but can rarely be deliberately changed. Cultural selection is not a rational process; it is not guided by but it creates reason.

The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself. In addition to this state of mind, 'reason,' there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process. But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.

We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment. But ‘fairness’ is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed--the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference.

For a half century, the Supreme Court, through increasingly fanciful legal reasoning, has handed the political Left victories in the culture wars—on race, sex, criminal justice, public order, schooling—that it would have found bruising, and sometimes impossible, to win through the constitutional legislative process.

Removing industry from the table will require a cultural shift before any shift in legislation. It will gradually become shameful for activists to work with the UPF industry as the understanding spreads that the companies are as responsible for diet-related disease as the tobacco industry is for smoking-related disease.

Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses.... As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] .... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long -- or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament.

The legislation of Leo VI completed a process by which the former Roman Empire in the West and the empire in the East went in opposite directions with political development.

Nowhere do “politicians” form a more separate and powerful section of the nation than precisely in North America. There, each of the two major parties which alternatively succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions. It is well known how the Americans have been trying for thirty years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and how in spite of it all they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. And nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends – and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.

Unlike the Medicare provisions, which were brought in by negotiation between the two principal parties, ‘Obamacare’ was the initiative of a single party, did not have the consent of the opposition and was concealed within 2,000 pages of legislative jargon that was never properly explained either to the public or to the members of Congress. Not surprisingly, therefore, the legislation has led to a polarization of opinion and a breakdown in the political process, each side claiming to represent the interests of the people, but neither side convinced that ‘the people’ includes those who did not vote for it.

Most foolishly, liberals grew increasingly reliant on the courts to circumvent the legislative process when it failed to deliver what they wanted (and I wanted too). Decisions rained down on everything from protecting rare fish to more explosive matters, such as abortion and school busing. Liberals lost the habit of taking the temperature of public opinion, building consensus, and taking small steps. This made the public more and more susceptible to the right’s claim that the judiciary was just an imperial preserve of educated elites. The charge stuck and the approval of judicial nominations has ever since been a highly partisan process, which the right now dominates. All these factors combined to convince a growing number of Americans that even if they wanted to work together, government action would be ineffective, too costly, counterproductive, or uncontrolled.

If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them; and we see even the most highly esteemed of capacities to fall under this, e.g. strategy, economics, rhetoric; now, since politics uses the rest of the sciences, and since, again, it legislates as to what we are to do and what we are to abstain from, the end of this science must include those of the others, so that this end must be the good for man. For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the state seems at all events something greater and more complete whether to attain or to preserve; though it is worth while to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states. These, then, are the ends at which our inquiry aims, since it is political science, in one sense of that term.

The State has a legal monopoly on the right to use aggression against others in the form of taxation and compulsory edicts (legislation). Not only must “customers” pay into its operation without regard to their consent, but they must surrender to the rules its internal processes determine at all times. Additionally, the State has a monopoly on the provision of security, and has anointed itself as the ultimate arbiter in all conflicts, including those conflicts which involve its own agents. It

More laying hens are slaughtered in the United States than cattle or pigs. Commercial laying hens are not bred for their flesh, but when their economic utility is over the still-young birds are trucked to the slaughterhouse and turned into meat products. In the process they are treated even more brutally than meat-type chickens because of their low market value. Their bones are very fragile from lack of exercise and from calcium depletion for heavy egg production, causing fragments to stick to the flesh during processing. The starvation practice known as forced molting results in beaded ribs that break easily at the slaughterhouse. Removal of food for several days before the hens are loaded onto the truck weakens their bones even more. Currently, the U.S. egg industry and the American Veterinary Medical Association oppose humane slaughter legislation for laying hens on the basis that their low economic value does not justify the cost of 'humane slaughter' technology. The industry created the inhumane conditions that are invoked to rationalize further unaccountability and cruelty.

Would the slower processes of legislation and law enforcement ultimately have accomplished greater results more painlessly? Demonstrations, experience has shown, are part of the process of stimulating legislation and law enforcement. The federal government reacts to events more quickly when a situation of conflict cries out for its intervention.

No, my friends, this won’t be solved from the top-down. This will have to be a bottom-up movement. You can’t expect government to do the right thing. You have to coerce it into doing the right thing. When there are more votes at stake than dollars, that’s when legislators will come around. But that’s not a reason to be daunted. In a democracy, the public has power.

My issue isn't with a Christian's involvement in the political arena. We need Christians involved in the political process. But we must not equate a political party's platform as representative of the Kingdom's purpose on earth. Nor should we demonize those who disagree with our political positions. Legislation, though important, cannot create change and transformation in the human heart. Power corrupts!

Wilson’s defining achievement as president was his legislative agenda, the “New Freedom.” He had written in 1908 that the president was “the political leader of the nation.” Wilson took it upon himself to be a new type of executive, a prime minister more than a president, to guide the legislative process so that “no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him.”4 The New Freedom represented his plan for a new America, with the government, the Constitution, and the relationship between the central authority and the people all remade—to give the president new, sweeping powers. Teddy Roosevelt had started this process in 1901. Wilson put an exclamation point on the effort. And the presidents who followed him built on Wilson’s theoretical designs and program directives.

But I knew the truth. It was a story I would see played out over and over again in the next few years. It wasn’t about any so-called principles—it was about chaos. But it was chaos that developed in a predictable pattern: the far-right knuckleheads would refuse to back the House leadership no matter what, but because they were “insurgents” they never had the responsibility of trying to actually fix things themselves. So they got to “burn it all down” and screw up the legislative process, which of course allowed them to continue to complain loudly about how Washington’s spending problem never got solved. That kept their favorite straw man alive to take more hits. And every time they punched him, they got another invitation to go on Fox News or talk radio, or they got another check from their friends in outside groups like DeMint’s outfit. It was their own little private stimulus plan.

What’s your status now?” the legislator asked them. “I’m undocumented,” one Brazilian student answered, bewildered. “Why don’t you start the process to become a citizen?” he continued. “I can’t,” she explained. “Why not?” he asked, revealing his profound ignorance of immigration law. Just as the law forbids most residents of the Third World to travel here—by requiring visas, but refusing to grant them—it also forbids virtually all people who are undocumented to regularize their status.

But it does not in general make sense to suppose that a legislature has an intent in passing a law. Legislation is a political process, in which deals are cut and compromises made. In both the public and the private deliberations about any statute many inconsistent reasons will be offered for framing a clause one way or another; many suggestions, not all of them consonant with one another, will be offered as to what the overall aims of the statute are. To extract from this mishmash of mixed motives a singular coherent intention will usually be impossible.46

Even political systems follow a form of rational tinkering, when people are rational hence take the better option: the Romans got their political system by tinkering, not by “reason.” Polybius in his Histories compares the Greek legislator Lycurgus, who constructed his political system while “untaught by adversity,” to the more experiential Romans, who, a few centuries later, “have not reached it by any process of reasoning [emphasis mine], but by the discipline of many struggles and troubles, and always choosing the best by the light of the experience gained in disaster.

Naturalization, on the other hand, also proved to be a failure. The whole naturalization system of European countries fell apart when it was confronted with stateless people, and this for the same reasons that the right of asylum had been set aside. Essentially naturalization was an appendage to the nation-state's legislation that reckoned only with "nationals," people born in its territory and citizens by birth. Naturalization was needed in exceptional cases, for single individuals whom circumstances might have driven into a foreign territory. The whole process broke down when it became a question of handling mass applications for naturalization: even from the purely administrative point of view, no European civil service could possibly have dealt with the problem. Instead of naturalizing at least a small portion of the new arrivals, the countries began to cancel earlier naturalizations, partly because of general panic and partly because the arrival of great masses of newcomers actually changed the always precarious position of naturalized citizens of the same origin. Cancellation of naturalization or the introduction of new laws which obviously paved the way for mass denaturalization shattered what little confidence the refugees might have retained in the possibility of adjusting themselves to a new normal life; if assimilation to the new country once looked a little shabby or disloyal, it was now simply ridiculous. The difference between a naturalized citizen and a stateless resident was not great enough to justify taking any trouble, the former being frequently deprived of important civil rights and threatened at any moment with the fate of the latter. Naturalized persons were largely assimilated to the status of ordinary aliens, and since the naturalized had already lost their previous citizenship, these measures simply threatened another considerable group with statelessness.

Rousseau’s ideas brought about-he moved the political process to the very centre of human existence by making the legislator, who is also a pedagogue, into the new Messiah, capable of solving all human problems by creating New Men. ‘Everything,’ he wrote, ‘is at root dependent on politics.’ Virtue is the product of good government. ‘Vices belong less to man, than to man badly governed.’ The political process, and the new kind of state it brings into being, are the universal remedies for the ills of mankind.49 Politics will do all. Rousseau thus prepared the blueprint for the principal delusions and follies of the twentieth century.

CHAP. I.: Of the Spirit of a Legislator. I SAY it, and methinks I have undertaken this work with no other view than to prove it; the spirit of a legislator ought to be that of moderation; political, like moral evil, lying always between two extremes. Let us produce an example. The set forms of justice are necessary to liberty; but the number of them might be so great as to be contrary to the end of the very laws that established them; processes would have no end; property would be uncertain; the goods of one of the parties would be adjudged to the other without examining, or they would both be ruined by examining too much. The citizens would lose their liberty and security; the accusers would no longer have any means to convict, nor the accused to justify themselves.

Both the fragmentation of power and the conflicting government policies are rooted in the political realities of a democratic system that operates by enacting detailed and specific legislation. Such a system tends to give undue political power to small groups that have highly concentrated interests, to give greater weight to obvious, direct, and immediate effects of government action than to possibly more important but concealed, indirect, and delayed effects, to set in motion a process that sacrifices the general interest to serve special interests, rather than the other way around. There is, as it were, an invisible hand in politics that operates in precisely the opposite direction to Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Individuals who intend only to promote the general interest are led by the invisible political hand to promote a special interest that they had no intention to promote.

From the dawn of Spain’s venture into the New World until the end of its colonial regime, Spanish America was gripped by an almost innate need to process, categorize, and label human differences in an effort to manage its vast empire.1 Whether it was conquistadors seeking to establish grades of difference between themselves and native rulers, or simple artisans striving to distinguish themselves from their peers, people paid careful attention to what others looked like, how they lived, what they wore, and how they behaved. Over time, rules were created to contain transgressions. The wearing of costumes and masks outside of sanctioned events and holidays was soundly discouraged, lest disguises lead to crimes, immorality, and mistaken identities.2 People who lived as others could be labeled criminals, and those who moved across color boundaries to enjoy privileges not associated with their caste did so at their own peril.3 When legislation failed to control behavior, social pressure impelled obedience and conformity.

Back in the early 1990s, the FBI started worrying about its ability to conduct telephone surveillance. The FBI could do it with the old analog phone switches: a laborious process involving alligator clips, wires, and a tape recorder. The problem was that digital switches didn’t work that way. Isolating individual connections was harder, and the FBI became concerned about the potential loss of its ability to wiretap. So it lobbied Congress hard and got a law passed in 1994 called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, requiring telcos to re-engineer their digital switches to have eavesdropping capabilities built in. Fast-forward 20 years, and the FBI again wants the IT industry to make surveillance easier for itself. A lot of communications no longer happen over the telephone. They’re happening over chat. They’re happening over e-mail. They’re happening over Skype. The FBI is currently lobbying for a legislative upgrade to CALEA, one that covers all communications systems: all voice, video, and text systems, including World of Warcraft and that little chat window attached to your online Scrabble game. The FBI’s ultimate goal is government prohibition of truly secure communications. Valerie

When the battle resumed in 1995, the Court’s target was an obscure federal statute that barred possession of guns near school buildings. Since every state had a similar law, the fate of the federal law, the Gun-Free School Zones Act, was of little moment. Nonetheless, the decision invalidating the statute, United States v. Lopez, ushered in the Rehnquist Court’s federalism revolution. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Rehnquist said that to uphold the statute would be to blur the “distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local.” This analysis implied an end to the long period during which the Court permitted Congress to decide for itself whether the distinction between national and local mattered for any particular piece of legislation. The vote was 5 to 4, with the dissenters quick to point out the implications. Justice Souter warned that “it seems fair to ask whether the step taken by the Court today does anything but portend a return to the untenable jurisprudence from which the Court extricated itself almost sixty years ago.” There followed, in quick succession, a series of closely divided decisions that constricted congressional authority not only under the Commerce Clause but also under the Fourteenth Amendment. Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment gives Congress “the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”—namely, the guarantees of due process and equal protection provided by the amendment’s Section 1.

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are. From this complacence, the critics have been emboldened to assume a dictatorial power, and have so far succeeded, that they are now become the masters, and have the assurance to give laws to those authors from whose predecessors they originally received them. The critic, rightly considered, is no more than the clerk, whose office it is to transcribe the rules and laws laid down by those great judges whose vast strength of genius hath placed them in the light of legislators, in the several sciences over which they presided. This office was all which the critics of old aspired to; nor did they ever dare to advance a sentence, without supporting it by the authority of the judge from whence it was borrowed. But in process of time, and in ages of ignorance, the clerk began to invade the power and assume the dignity of his master. The laws of writing were no longer founded on the practice of the author, but on the dictates of the critic. The clerk became the legislator, and those very peremptorily gave laws whose business it was, at first, only to transcribe them. Hence arose an obvious, and perhaps an unavoidable error; for these critics being men of shallow capacities, very easily mistook mere form for substance. They acted as a judge would, who should adhere to the lifeless letter of law, and reject the spirit. Little circumstances, which were perhaps accidental in a great author, were by these critics considered to constitute his chief merit, and transmitted as essentials to be observed by all his successors. To these encroachments, time and ignorance, the two great supporters of imposture, gave authority; and thus many rules for good writing have been established, which have not the least foundation in truth or nature; and which commonly serve for no other purpose than to curb and restrain genius, in the same manner as it would have restrained the dancing-master, had the many excellent treatises on that art laid it down as an essential rule that every man must dance in chains. To

Weaving together two civic strands of power and obligation, the trust embodies: (1) the people’s delegation of authority to their government to control and manage resources; and (2) the people’s assertion, through a fiduciary obligation, of limits on that authority to ensure that it functions to benefit the public rather than special interests (who may have greater sway over the legislative process).

For the future we should understand that this process of democratizing a state legislative system takes time. Changing a few faces is not enough, just as earning majority support of a legislator's constituents doesn't help if he has been put there by special interests. You have to be around long enough to out-organize the special interests, and change the legislature's leadership.

McCulloch would have put him on notice that "it is a constitution we are expounding," one that was "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs," and which did not "deprive the legislature of the capacity to avail itself of experience, to exercise its reason, and to accommodate its legislation to circumstances." It had become clear by 1868, if not before then, that the Constitution was not chained to the original expectations as to what powers the legislature could exercise. This recognition, in turn, suggests a more durable basis for a doctrine of substantive due process than simply labeling everything one finds distasteful or wrongheaded as "arbitrary." The eighteenth-century understanding of due process may have been primarily, if not exclusively, procedural, but it had evolved in a legal system where the legislature exercised unfettered power over substantive law. The new Constitution's Supremacy Clause, however, subordinated legislative power to the Constitution itself. As I suggested in my opening essay, in a republic, "due process," when it comes to the wisdom of government policy, is ordinarily provided by the political process, but it is likely the case that we do not regard every issue as properly resolved by majoritarian institutions. As

I have lived and worked in the Washington, D. C., metropolitan area for almost four decades. During this period I have watched families and institutions recycle their problems for several generations, despite enormous efforts to be innovative. The opportunity to observe this firsthand was provided by my involvement in the major institutions designed by our civilization to foster change: religion, education, psychotherapy, and politics (I have been here since Eisenhower). That experience included twenty years as a pulpit rabbi, an overlapping twenty-five years as an organizational consultant and family therapist with a broadly ecumenical practice, and several years of service as a community relations specialist for the Johnson White House helping metropolitan areas throughout the United States to voluntarily desegregate housing, before Congress passed appropriate civil rights legislation. Eventually, the accumulation of this experience began to show me how similar all of our “systems of salvation” are in their structure, the way they formulate problems, the range of their approaches, and their rationalizations for their failures. It was, indeed, the basic similarity in their thinking processes, despite their different sociological classifications, that first led me to consider the possibility that our constant failure to change families and institutions fundamentally has less to do with finding the right methods than with misleading emotional and conceptual factors that reside within society itself. For

On Thursday, February 19, 2015, two months after the United States and Cuba announced a willingness to re-establish normal diplomacy, after over 5 decades of hostile relations, the United States House Minority leader and eight fellow Democratic Party lawmakers went to Havana to meet with the Cuban Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel. On February 27th, Cuban Foreign Ministry Director for North America, Josefina Vidal, and her delegation met at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Although most Cubans and many Americans have a positive view towards improving diplomatic relations, there are conservative legislators in both the U.S. House and Senate that have not joined in the promotion and necessary détente and good will in easing the normalization of relations between the two countries. On May 29, 2015, by Executive Order, President Obama took a first step by removing Cuba from the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism.” Since then President Trump has been determined to overturn most of what has been passed by the former administration. On June 16, 2017 President Trump moved to reverse many of President Obama’s policies towards Cuba. According to the CATO Institute the alleged justification for this reversal is that it will pressure the Cuban government to make concessions on human rights and political policies towards the Island Nation. Apparently Trump’s new restrictions will impose limits on travel and how U.S. Companies will be able to do business in Cuba. Although the final say regarding the normalization between the two countries is in the hands of politicians representing their various constituencies. The United States has long worked and traded with other Communist nations. Recently additional pressure has been applied by corporations that, quite frankly, are fed up with the slowness of the process. The idea that everything hinges on the fact Cuba is a Communist country, run by a dictatorship, does not take into account the plight of the individual Cuban citizens. The United States may wish for a different government; however it is up to Cuba to decide what form of government they will eventually have.

The job of trade unions, parties, and even radical social movements is precisely to institutionalize unruly protest and anger. Their function is, one might say, to try to translate anger, frustration, and pain into a coherent political program that can be the basis of policy making and legislation. They are the transmission belt between an unruly public and rule-making elites. The implicit assumption is that if they do their jobs well, not only will they be able to fashion political demands that are, in principle, digestible by legislative institutions, they will, in the process, discipline and regain control of the tumultuous crowds by plausibly representing their interests, or most of them, to the policy makers. Those policy makers negotiate with such “institutions of translation” on the premise that they command the allegiance of and hence can control the constituencies they purport to represent. In this respect, it is no exaggeration to say that organized interests of this kind are parasitic on the spontaneous defiance of those whose interests they presume to represent. It is that defiance that is, at such moments, the source of what influence they have as governing elites strive to contain and channel insurgent masses back into the run of normal politics.

Rendering the slaughter process less inhumane is a possibility. A question is whether "humane slaughter" legislation for poultry will speed or delay the day when regarding a fellow creature as food is no longer an option.

There was no distinguishing between “Trumpism” and Trump. His rejection of politics as usual included the “decision-making loop” through which ideas traveled from the conservative superstructure to the legislative and executive branches of government. All that mattered to Trump was the last thing you said about him. His impulses replaced the daily schedules and routine processes

Stanley Hauerwas has observed that the most basic job of the church is just to be the church—to embody a different way of being that arises from following the radical Rabbi from Nazareth who managed to get himself executed on a cross outside the city walls.[32] The twin temptations to either shortcut the process by too heavily relying on legislation or to withdraw into sectarianism should not be underestimated. Maintaining a position that allows the church primarily to be the church while still offering a critique to the political institutions is difficult. It is, however, critical for our best serving a kingdom agenda at all levels of human interaction—public and private. The role of the church is to just be the church, but in so doing the church should both embody and speak critique to the powers that have been corrupted and no longer serve a kingdom agenda.

So how do people who think and behave this way respond when the public rejects their agenda? They attempt to use their power to overrule the democratic process. When Democrats threaten to win elections, they rig the voting process, as they did in Georgia. When Democrats win despite election rigging, they strip the offices Democrats win of power, as they did in Wisconsin. When Democratic policies prevail despite all of that, they use apparatchik-stuffed courts to strike down legislation on the flimsiest of grounds. As David Frum, the author of Trumpocracy, warned a year ago: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” That’s happening as we speak. So

In addition to this state of mind, “reason,” there’s a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process. But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.

The four presidents who “tried to save” America took this perilous trail. That should be admired, not condemned. It also should be noted that none of the men who “tried to save her” were pushovers in office. They typically deferred to Congress when the Constitution required they do so, and they let Congress lead the legislative process—that was the proper course constitutionally. But Congress often characterized them as too strong and too willing to wield executive power. That should say something about the charge that they were executive lightweights. These four men exercised power not for political gain but to “defend the Constitution” from radical departures from its original intent. They defended their oath. If Americans believe in a federal Republic with limited powers, defined by a written constitution, with checks and balances—not only between the three branches of the general government but also between the general and state governments—then the four men who “tried to save” constitutional government in our Republic should be regarded as the greatest presidents in American history. They must be our standard. Our future executives should be more like Tyler than either Roosevelt in the use of executive powers and more like Cleveland or Coolidge than Obama in regard to character. The presidency is a potentially dangerous office that, regardless of which party controls it, should always be viewed with suspicion. A return to this type of vigilance would protect both individual liberty and the liberty of the community from executive abuse. As we enter another presidential election season, that should be our goal. A proper understanding of the president’s limited powers under our Constitution should guide the way all Americans vote. THE FOUNDERS’ EXECUTIVE The Founders left clues in the historical record, some of them more conspicuous than others, which defined their vision for the executive branch.

So do you go to the police or not? Well, if you don't, people will claim that the abuse wasn't real because theres no police report about it. If you do enter the system, you have to accept that all of what I've detailed in this chapter is what you're facing; be willing to sign up for the years-long process in the event that case actually goes to trial; know you have little chance of seeing justice because legislation and law enforcement have not yet caught up with the pace of online crime; and, even if you re successful, accept that a court order may not do much to stop an obsessive abuser.

The media, polling, and Big Tech rigging alone would have been enough to cause Republicans to doubt any election loss, but what Democrats did to the manner in which people vote was further destabilizing to the country... Long-standing historical concerns about the integrity of elections led to the development of a single Election Day, a secret ballot, and governmental running of elections--all developments that went a long way toward building up trust in America's electoral process. In recent years, Democrats have lobbied to move away from each of those things, saying that efforts to stop them from doing so were 'voter suppression.' In the months leading up to 2020, Democrats were able to convince legislators, courts, and election officials to open elections up to ballot trafficking, voting without showing identification, voting without following state laws or guidelines, and counting ballots without oversight from independent observers. Meager checks on fraud, such as signature matching, were watered down to the point of meaninglessness...And then Democrats tried to make permanent all of the radical changes they had made by passing legislation to ban voter ID, legalize vote trafficking weaken absentee voter verifications, and make it more difficult to keep updated lists of voters.

Finance capital subordinates the Canadian State more and more directly to its interests and control. State-monopoly capitalism — the integration or merging of the interests of finance capital with the state — is a new stage in the extension of corporate control to all sectors of economic and political life. The government, while seemingly independent of specific corporate interests, has become predominantly the political instrument of a small group comprising the top monopoly capitalists for exercising control over the rest of society. Finance capital uses the state to provide orders, capital and subsidies, and to secure foreign markets and investments. Monopoly capital supports the expansion of the state sector — both services and enterprises — when that serves its interests, and at other times it uses the state to cut back and privatize. The state is also used to redistribute income and wealth in favour of monopoly interests through the tax system, and through legislation to drive down wages and weaken the trade union movement. State-monopoly capitalism undermines the basis of traditional bourgeois democracy. The subordination of the state to the interests of finance capital erodes the already limited role of elected government bodies, federal, provincial and local. Big business openly intervenes in the electoral process on its own behalf, and also indirectly through a network of pro-corporate institutes and think tanks. It uses its control of mass media to influence the ideas and attitudes of the people, and to blatantly influence election results. It corrupts the democratic process through the buying of politicians and officials. It tramples on the political right of the Canadian people to exercise any meaningful choice, thereby promoting widespread public alienation and cynicism about the electoral process.

One reason Occupy got so much attention in the media at first--most of the seasoned activists I talked to agreed that we had never seen anything like it--was that so many more mainstream activist groups so quickly endorsed our cause. I am referring here particularly to those organizations that might be said to define the left wing of the Democratic Party: MoveOn.org, for example, or Rebuild the Dream. Such groups were enormously energized by the birth f Occupy. But, as I touched on above, most also seem to have assumed that the principled rejection of electoral politics and top-down forms of organization was simply a passing phase, the childhood of a movement that, they assumed, would mature into something resembling a left-wing Tea Party. From their perspective, the camps soon became a distraction. The real business of the movement would begin once Occupy became a conduit for guiding young activists into legislative campaigns, and eventually, get-out-the-vote drives for progressive candidates. It took some time for them to fully realize that the core of the movement was serious about its principles. It’s also fairly clear that when the camps were cleared, not only such groups, but the liberal establishment more generally, made a strategic decision to look the other way. From the perspective of the radicals, this was the ultimate betrayal. We had made our commitment to horizontal principles clear from the outset. They were the essence of what we were trying to do. But at the same time, we understood that there has always been a tacit understanding, in America, between radical groupes like ourselves, and their liberal allies. The radicals’ call for revolutionary change creates a fire to the liberals’ left that makes the liberals’ own proposals for reform seem a more reasonable alternative. We win them a place at the table. They keep us out of jail. In these terms, the liberal establishment utterly failed to live up to their side of the bargain. Occupy succeeded brilliantly in changing the national debate to begin addressing issues of financial power, the corruption of the political process, and social inequality, all to the benefit of the liberal establishment, which had struggled to gain traction around these issues. But when the Tasers, batons, and SWAT teams arrived, that establishment simply disappeared and left us to our fate. (p. 140-141)

Kagan noted that corporations may express themselves outside of the context of an election, and can both disseminate information and advocate favored policies via the standard lobbying process. She drew a distinction between lobbying and election expenditure, saying, “Of course corporations can lobby members of Congress in the same way that they could before this legislation. What this legislation is designed to do, because of its anticorruption interest, is to make sure that that lobbying is just persuasion and it’s not coercion.” The problem with corporate spending, according to Kagan, is the unidimensionality of corporate interest. “Few individuals,” she said, have “only our economic interests. We have beliefs, we have convictions; we have likes and dislikes. Corporations engage the political process in an entirely different way and this is what makes them so much more damaging.

Often these changes demand structural reform on a large scale. My experience of governing is that changes usually fit into two categories. First, there are changes which are one stroke of the legislative or administrative pen – such as abolition of a tax or setting a minimum wage. They’re important. But the process of government in respect of them is relatively straightforward.

The preexisting and presumed congruence and harmony of law and statute, justice and legality, substance and process dominated every detail of the legal thinking of the legislative state. Only through the acceptance of these parings was it possible to subordinate oneself to the rule of law precisely in the name of freedom.

The final feature of emancipation’s long history was the ubiquity of violence. The reference here is not to the great explosions that echo through American history—bleeding Kansas, John Brown’s raid, or the Civil War itself—but to the ceaseless carnage that manifested itself in every confrontation between master and slave. In the clash of powerful material interests and deeply held beliefs, slaveholders and their numerous allies did not give way easily. Beginning with abolition in the North—although this was generally described as a peaceful process imbued with the ethos of Quaker quietism and legislative and judicial activism—the movement for universal freedom was one of violent, bloody conflict that left a trail of destroyed property, broken bones, traumatized men and women, and innumerable lifeless bodies. It was manifested in direct confrontations, kidnappings, pogroms, riots, insurrections, and finally open warfare. Usually, the masters and their allies—with their monopoly on violence—perpetrated much of the carnage. To challenge that monopoly required force, often deadly force; when the opponents of slavery struck back with violence of their own, the attacks and counterattacks escalated. The pattern held in the North, where there were few slaves, and in the South, where there were many. When the Civil War arrived and the war for union became a war for freedom, violence was raised to another level, but the precedent had been long established.

None of the suggestions in this chapter is remotely actionable today, because government has been co-opted in what is known as “elite capture.” By this we mean that the government bends the regulatory systems in the food industry’s favor, to maintain a decidedly lopsided power structure. Either the legislative branch won’t act because the food industry is paying it off, the executive branch won’t act because it’s afraid of the political repercussions, or the populace won’t act because as far as they are concerned, “a calorie is still a calorie” and they still believe in personal responsibility—and they’re addicted anyway.

Reconstruction is part of our lives even today. Issues that agitate American politics—who is an American citizen and what rights come along with citizenship, the relative powers of the national government and the states, affirmative action, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism—are Reconstruction questions. Reconstruction is embedded in our judicial processes. Every session of the Supreme Court adjudicates issues arising from the Fourteenth Amendment and the civil rights legislation of Reconstruction.

An NDP government will establish, in law, clear criteria for resource extraction and transportation based on the principles of sustainable development, which include internalizing all pollution costs and putting a price on carbon. In our day and age there is no longer any way around it. Any new energy project requires a thorough, credible environmental assessment process, based on criteria of sustainable development and social acceptability. We don’t have one in Canada, because the Conservatives have gutted all the relevant existing legislation and reduced the staff responsible for enforcing it.

Two points in particular must be mentioned. I have pointed out before that social legislation or, more generally, institutional change for the benefit of the masses is not simply something which has been forced upon capitalist society by an ineluctable necessity to alleviate the ever-deepening misery of the poor but that, besides raising the standard of living of the masses by virtue of its automatic effects, the capitalist process also provided for that legislation the means “and the will.” The words in quotes require further explanation that is to be found in the principle of spreading rationality. The capitalist process rationalizes behavior and ideas and by so doing chases from our minds, along with metaphysical belief, mystic and romantic ideas of all sorts. Thus it reshapes not only our methods of attaining our ends but also these ultimate ends themselves. “Free thinking” in the sense of materialistic monism, laicism and pragmatic acceptance of the world this side of the grave follow from this not indeed by logical necessity but nevertheless very naturally. On the one hand, our inherited sense of duty, deprived of its traditional basis, becomes focused in utilitarian ideas about the betterment of mankind which, quite illogically to be sure, seem to withstand rationalist criticism better than, say, the fear of God does. On the other hand, the same rationalization of the soul rubs off all the glamour of super-empirical sanction from every species of classwise rights. This then, together with the typically capitalist enthusiasm for Efficiency and Service—so completely different from the body of ideas which would have been associated with those terms by the typical knight of old—breeds that “will” within the bourgeoisie itself. Feminism, an essentially capitalist phenomenon, illustrates the point still more clearly. The reader will realize that these tendencies must be understood “objectively” and that therefore no amount of anti-feminist or anti-reformist talk or even of temporary opposition to any particular measure proves anything against this analysis. These things are the very symptoms of the tendencies they pretend to fight.

solutions are beyond the reach of the electoral process and legislative process.

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When managers and consultants fail, government frequently responds with legislation, policies, and regulations. In earlier times, the federal government limited its formal influence to national concerns such as the Homestead Act and the Post Office. Now constituents badger elected officials to “do something” about a variety of ills: pollution, dangerous products, hazardous working conditions, and chaotic schools, to name a few. Governing bodies respond by making “policy.” But policymakers often don’t understand the problem well enough to get the solution right, and a sizable body of research records a continuing saga of perverse ways in which the implementation process undermines even good solutions (Bardach, 1977; Elmore, 1978; Freudenberg and Gramling, 1994; Peters, 1999; Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973). Policymakers, for example, have been trying for decades to reform U.S. public schools. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent. The result? About as successful as America’s switch to the metric system. In the 1950s Congress passed legislation mandating adoption of metric standards and measures. More than six decades later, if you know what a hectare is, or can visualize the size of a three-hundred-gram package of crackers, you’re ahead of most Americans. Legislators did not factor into their solution what it would take to get their decision implemented.

Humans have natural rights in the state of nature but they do not have civil rights. Civil rights are derived from membership in a society. The Republicans who controlled both houses of Congress after the Civil War knew this. They also knew that, before conferring civil rights, they had to once and for all abolish slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. Republican support for the amendment: 100 percent. Democratic support: 23 percent. Even after the Civil War, only a tiny percentage of Democrats were willing to sign up to permanently end slavery. Most Democrats wanted it to continue. In the following year, on June 13, 1866, the Republican Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment overturning the Dred Scott decision and granting full citizenship and equal rights under the law to blacks. This amendment prohibited states from abridging the “privileges and immunities” of all citizens, from depriving them of “due process of law” or denying them “equal protection of the law.” The Fourteenth Amendment passed the House and Senate with exclusive Republican support. Not a single Democrat either in the House or the Senate voted for it. Two years later, in 1868, Congress with the support of newly-elected Republican president Ulysses Grant passed the Fifteenth Amendment granting suffrage to blacks. The right to vote, it said, cannot be “denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” In the Senate, the Fifteenth Amendment passed by a vote of 39 to 13. Every one of the 39 “yes” votes came from Republicans. (Some Republicans like Charles Sumner abstained because they wanted the measure to go even further than it did.) All the 13 “no” votes came from Democrats. In the House, every “yes” vote came from a Republican and every Democrat voted “no.” It is surely a matter of the greatest significance that the constitutional provisions that made possible the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Bill only entered the Constitution thanks to the Republican Party. Beyond this, the GOP put forward a series of Civil Rights laws to further reinforce black people’s rights to freedom, equality, and social justice. When Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866—guaranteeing to blacks the rights to make contracts and to have the criminal laws apply equally to whites and blacks—the Democrats struck back. They didn’t have the votes in Congress, but they had a powerful ally in President Andrew Johnson. Johnson vetoed the legislation. Now this may seem like an odd act for Lincoln’s vice president, but it actually wasn’t. Many people don’t realize that Johnson wasn’t a Republican; he was a Democrat. Historian Kenneth Stampp calls him “the last Jacksonian.”8 Lincoln put him on the ticket because he was a pro-union Democrat and Lincoln was looking for ways to win the votes of Democrats opposed to secession. Johnson, however, was both a southern partisan and a Democratic partisan. Once the Civil War ended, he attempted to lead weak-kneed Republicans into a new Democratic coalition based on racism and white privilege. Johnson championed the Democratic mantra of white supremacy, declaring, “This is a country for white men and, by God, as long as I am president, it shall be a government of white men.” In his 1867 annual message to Congress, Johnson declared that blacks possess “less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a consistent tendency to relapse into barbarism.”9 These are perhaps the most racist words uttered by an American president, and no surprise, they were uttered by a Democrat.

In law, the moment of temptation is the moment of choice, when a judge realizes that in the case before him his strongly held view of justice, his political and moral imperative, is not embodied in a statute or in any provision of the Constitution. He must then choose between his version of justice and abiding by the American form of government. Yet the desire to do justice, whose nature seems to him obvious, is compelling, while the concept of constitutional process is abstract, rather arid, and the abstinence it counsels unsatisfying. To give in to temptation, this one time, solves an urgent human problem, and a faint crack appears in the American foundation. A judge has begun to rule where a legislator should.

Nevertheless, most governments remain wary of running the risk of slowing down the drive towards economic expansion or decelerating the treadmill of production (Novek & Kampen 1992). Caught in a contradictory position as both promoter of economic development and as environmental regulator, governments often engage in a process of environmental managerialism (Redclift 1986), in which they attempt to legislate a limited degree of protection sufficient to deflect criticism but not enough to derail the engine of growth. By enacting environmental policies and procedures that are complex, ambiguous and open to exploitation by the forces of capital production and accumulation (Modavi 1991: 270) the state reaffirms its commitment to strategies for promoting economic development.

When managers and consultants fail, government frequently responds with legislation, policies, and regulations. In earlier times, the federal government limited its formal influence to national concerns such as the Homestead Act and the Post Office. Now constituents badger elected officials to “do something” about a variety of ills: pollution, dangerous products, hazardous working conditions, and chaotic schools, to name a few. Governing bodies respond by making “policy.” But policymakers often don’t understand the problem well enough to get the solution right, and a sizable body of research records a continuing saga of perverse ways in which the implementation process undermines even good solutions (Bardach, 1977; Elmore, 1978; Freudenberg and Gramling, 1994; Peters, 1999; Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973). Policymakers,

Countering this view, confessing Christians seek to maintain the unity of the church through discipline, not through division. The confessing movement is strongly committed to staying WITHIN. It is better for churches to learn to respect their own legislative processes and discipline themselves accordingly than to face the even greater problems of separation, division of property, and the anguish of divorce. Confessing Christians seek to reform their churches, not leave them. Those who split off leave the patient in the hands of the euthanasia advocates, the Kevorkians of dying modernity. The Holy Spirit will not bless willful unnecessary divisiveness. If classic Christians self-righteously leave, they abandon the legacy, the patrimony, the bequests, the institutions, and the resources that have been many generations in the making with much tears and sweat. Walking away turns out to have weightier moral impediments than hanging in. IT SEEMS UNTHINKABLE TO ABANDON, WITHOUT FURTHER PRAYERS FOR SPECIAL GRACE, THOSE HISTORIC COMMUNIONS BY WHICH SO MANY HAVE BEEN BAPTIZED. The faithful have committed themselves for generations to the support of these communions which their classic doctrines and evangelical revivals have engendered. To allow these resources to be permanently taken over by those inimical to the faith cannot be an act of responsibility... ...To flee the church is not to discipline it. No one corrects a family by leaving it. Separation does not foster discipline. Discipline is fostered by patient trust, corrective love, and willingness to live with incremental change if that is what the Spirit is allowing. Discipline seeks to mend the broken church by a change of heart.

The alienation of Americans from the democratic process has also eroded knowledge of the most basic facts about our constitutional architecture of checks and balances. When the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a broad survey on our Constitution, released in September 2006, they found that more than a third of the respondents believed the executive branch has the final say on all issues and can overrule the legislative and judicial branches. Barely half—53 percent—believed that the president was required to follow a Supreme Court decision with which he disagreed. Similarly, only 55 percent of those questioned believed that the Supreme Court had the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. Another study found that the majority of respondents did not know that Congress—rather than the president—has the power to declare war. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute conducted a study in 2005 of what our nation’s college students knew about the Constitution, American government, and American history that provoked the American Political Science Association Task Force on Civic Education to pronounce that it is “axiomatic that current levels of political knowledge, political engagement, and political enthusiasm are so low as to threaten the vitality and stability of democratic politics in the United States.” The study found that less than half of college students “recognized that the line ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ is from the Declaration of Independence.” They also found that “an overwhelming majority, 72.8 percent, could not correctly identify the source of the idea of ‘a wall of separation’ between church and state.” When the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation conducted a survey of high school students to determine their feelings toward the First Amendment, they found that “after the text of the First Amendment was read to students, more than a third of them (35 percent) thought that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Nearly a quarter (21 percent) did not know enough about the First Amendment to even give an opinion. Of those who did express an opinion, an even higher percentage (44 percent) agreed that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” The survey revealed that “nearly three-fourths” of high school students “either don’t know how they feel about [the First Amendment] or they take it for granted.

United States is committed to protecting privacy. It is an element of individual dignity and an aspect of participation in democratic society. To an increasing extent, privacy protections have become critical to the information-based economy. Stronger consumer data privacy protections will buttress the trust that is necessary to promote the full economic, social, and political uses of networked technologies. The increasing quantities of personal data that these technologies subject to collection, use, and disclosure have fueled innovation and significant social benefits. We can preserve these benefits while also ensuring that our consumer data privacy policy better reflects the value that Americans place on privacy and bolsters trust in the Internet and other networked technologies. The framework set forth in the preceding pages provides a way to achieve these goals. The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights should be the legal baseline that governs consumer data privacy in the United States. The Administration will work with Congress to bring this about, but it will also work with privatesector stakeholders to adopt the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in the absence of legislation. To encourage adoption, the Department of Commerce will convene multistakeholder processes to encourage the development of enforceable, context-specific codes of conduct. The United States Government will engage with our international partners to increase the interoperability of our respective consumer data privacy frameworks. Federal agencies will continue to develop innovative privacy-protecting programs and guidance as well as enforce the broad array of existing Federal laws that protect consumer privacy. A cornerstone of this framework is its call for the ongoing participation of private-sector stakeholders. The views that companies, civil society, academics, and advocates provided to the Administration through written comments, public symposia, and informal discussions have been invaluable in shaping this framework. Implementing it, and making progress toward consumer data privacy protections that support a more trustworthy networked world, will require all of us to continue to work together★ 45 ★

The danger of an administrative return to an extralegal regime becomes particularly concrete when one recognizes the potential for evasion. Administrative law evades not only the law but also its institutions, processes, and rights. The central evasion is the end run around acts of Congress and the judgments of the courts by substituting executive edicts. This suggests that there can be an alternative system of law, which is not quite law, but that nonetheless can be enforced against the public. As if this were not enough, the evasion also gets around the Constitution’s institutions and processes. For example, when the executive makes regulations, it claims to escape the constitutional requirements for the election of lawmakers, for bicameralism, for deliberation, for publication of legislative journals, and for a veto. Similarly, when the executive adjudicates disputes, it claims to sidestep most of the requirements about judicial independence, due process, grand juries, petit juries, and judicial warrants and orders. The judicial evasion is particularly troubling when one realizes that it escapes almost all of the procedural rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Recognizing at least the due process problem, courts and commentators sometimes suggest that administrative adjudication is subject to a lesser, administrative version of due process. It remains unclear, however, how a fraction of a right can substitute for the whole, or how the due process of administrative power in an administrative tribunal can substitute for the due process of law in a court. This is like a substitution of water for whisky, and the fact that both are liquid does not hide the evasion.

the American system of checks and balances disperses federal lawmaking authority among multiple, overlapping political forums. As a result, federal policymaking power is shared: Congress is given the primary power to draft laws, subject to the president's veto and judicial review; the executive branch is given the primary power to implement laws, subject to congressional oversight and judicial review; and the courts have the primary power to interpret laws, subject to a variety of legislative and executive checks, including the appointment process, budgetary powers, and the passage of "overrides"-laws that explicitly reverse or materially modify existing judicial interpretations of statutes.

English restrictive legislation merely hastened the process and inadvertently pushed Americans toward self-sufficiency. At

This faith [in majoritarian democracy] may prevent one from recognizing that the more numerous the people are whom one tries to “represent” through the legislative process and the more numerous the matters in which one tries to represent them, the less the word “representation” has a meaning referable to the actual will of actual people other than that of the persons named as their “representatives.

In the summer of 2014, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and other members of the Democratic brain trust introduced a measure to amend the First Amendment as follows: Authorizes Congress and the states to regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections. Grants Congress and the states the power to implement and enforce this amendment by appropriate legislation, and to distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections. Declares that nothing in this amendment shall be construed to grant Congress or the states the power to abridge the freedom of the press.8 So, let me get this straight: The amendment would allow politicians in Washington, D.C., and state capitals to regulate speech that directly relates to the business of government and their jobs—the type of speech that should be most protected! This con job was nothing but a power grab to control how citizens—including corporations and conservative interest groups—can express their political views, a grab to help keep corrupt incumbents in office. After all, it’s tough to be voted out of office when you help control what your opponents and constituents can say about you. And it’s awfully hard to express one’s individual right to a fair vote when the outcome of an election is effectively rigged. Note the special carveout for the media. Reid and company were trying to make it so corporations and conservative interest groups would be muzzled, but unions and the Democrats’ tame press would be free to spew any kind of biased crap they like. If they can’t win elections fair and square, Democrats are more than willing to silence huge portions of the citizenry to stay in power. Had the amendment somehow passed, it would have been the first time one of the Constitution’s core individual rights would have been infringed through the amendment process itself.9 The attempt itself is disgraceful.

2010 is not just any election year: it is crucial given that this class of governors will be in charge as their states draw Congressional and state legislative districts as part of the reapportionment process after the next census. And given historical trends in midterm elections and the lopsided majority Democrats enjoy in Congress, the possibility that Republicans could make gains in House races next year could give the party a psychological boost at the halfway point of Mr. Obama’s term. Jankowski immediately recognized the opportunity. As provided in the Constitution, every state redraws all of its district lines every ten years, that is, after the census. That means elections in “zero years” matter more than others. Jankowski realized it would be possible to target states where the legislature is in charge of redistricting, flip as many chambers as possible, take control of the process, and redraw the lines.

One might think that the exposure of unsanitary conditions and animal cruelty in the corporate farming and food-processing industries would provoke lawmakers to punish the perpetrators and tighten laws protecting the safety of our food supply. But no, in several states they have instead directed their fury against the citizen-activists who exposed the wrongdoing by levying heavy penalties against the surreptitious photographing of inhumane outrages. 6 Republican legislators in North Carolina introduced a bill to make it a felony to disclose the chemicals (some of which are toxic to humans and animals) employed in fracking for natural gas. The bill also authorized drilling companies to oblige emergency responders cleaning up chemical spills to sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to disclose the names of the chemicals in their proprietary stew to the public—or their toxicity.

Hamas declared that the perceived demise of the peace process meant that its political participation could not be seen in the context of conferring legitimacy onto the Oslo Accords. In 1996, Hamas had boycotted the legislative elections for fear of legitimating the accords.125

Jinnah had, among other things, criticized the singing in government schools of the patriotic hymn ‘Vande Mataram’. Composed by the great Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the poem invoked Hindu temples, praised the Hindu goddess Durga, and spoke of seventy million Indians, each carrying a sword, ready to defend their motherland against invaders, who could be interpreted as being the British, or Muslims, or both. ‘Vande Mataram’ first became popular during the swadeshi movement of1905–07. The revolutionary Aurobindo Ghose named his political journal after it. Rabindranath Tagore was among the first to set it to music. His version was sung by his niece Saraladevi Chaudhurani at the Banaras Congress of 1905. The same year, the Tamil poet Subramania Bharati rendered it into his language. In Bengali and Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, Hindi and Gujarati, the song had long been sung at nationalist meetings and processions. After the Congress governments took power in 1937, the song was sometimes sung at official functions. The Muslim League objected vigorously. One of its legislators called it ‘anti-Muslim’, another, ‘an insult to Islam’. Jinnah himself claimed the song was ‘not only idolatrous but in its origins and substance [was] a hymn to spread hatred for the Musalmans’. Nationalists in Bengal were adamant that the song was not aimed at Muslims.The prominent Calcutta Congressman Subhas Chandra Bose wrote to Gandhi that ‘the province (or at least the Hindu portion of it) is greatly perturbed over the controversy raised in certain Muslim circles over the song “Bande Mataram”. As far as I can judge, all shades of Hindu opinion are unanimous in opposing any attempts to ban the song in Congress meetings and conferences.’ Bose himself thought that ‘we should think a hundred times before we take any steps in the direction of banning the song’. The social worker Satis Dasgupta told Gandhi that ‘Vande Mataram’ was ‘out and out a patriotic song—a song in which all the children of the mother[land] can participate, be they Hindu or Mussalman’. It did use Hindu images, but such imagery was common in Bengal, where even Muslim poets like Nazrul Islam often referred to Hindu gods and legends. ‘Vande Mataram’, argued Dasgupta, was ‘never a provincial cry and never surely a communal cry’. Faced with Jinnah’s complaints on the one side and this defence by Bengali patriots on the other, Gandhi suggested a compromise: that Congress governments should have only the first two verses sung. These evoked the motherland without specifying any religious identity. But this concession made many Bengalis ‘sore at heart’; they wanted the whole song sung. On the other side, Muslims were not satisfied either; for, the ascription of a mother-like status to India was dangerously close to idol worship.

There could and, I think, there should be legislation to prevent political candidates not merely from spending more than a certain amount of money on their election campaigns, but also to prevent them from resorting to the kind of anti-rational propaganda that makes nonsense of the whole democratic process. Such preventive

When Congress passed Obamacare it attempted by statute to confer fundamental legislative powers on the executive branch, and even sought to prohibit future Congresses from altering its unconstitutional act. Specifically, Congress created the fifteen-member Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which ostensibly is responsible for controlling Medicare costs. The board submits a proposal to Congress, which automatically becomes law, and the Department of Health and Human Services must implement it, unless the proposal is affirmatively blocked by Congress and the president. Even then, it can be stopped only if the elected branches agree on a substitute. Obamacare also attempts to prohibit citizens from challenging the board’s decisions in court. Moreover, Obamacare seeks to tie the hands of future Congresses by forbidding Congress from dissolving the board outside of a seven-month period in 2017, and only by a supermajority three-fifths vote of both houses. If Congress does not act in that time frame, Congress is prohibited from even altering a board proposal.42 Apart from all the rest, the abuse of power by one Congress and president in attempting to reorganize the federal government and redraft fundamentally the Constitution outside of the amendment processes, with the intention of binding all future Congresses in perpetuity and leaving citizens with no political or legal recourse, is simply sinister. But it underscores the Statists’ contempt for the Constitution and self-government.

In naming Gallery B for Elizabeth, we honor her today for her vision, her wisdom, and her courage in speaking out for what she believed to be right. She symbolizes the role the gallery plays in the legislative process. She reminds us that a single person, speaking from the heart, can affect the future of all Alaskans. -Fran Ulmer

Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question. Nonpartisan districting, same-day registration, and weekend elections would all increase the competitiveness of races and might spur more participation from the electorate- and the more the electorate is paying attention, the more integrity is awarded. Public financing of campaigns or free television and radio time could drastically reduce the constant scourging for money and the influence of special interests. Changes in the rules in the House and the Senate might empower legislators in the minority, increase transparency in the process, and encourage more probing reporting.

In May 1896, the thoughtful justices of the high court, men who help to clarify national standards for everyone, determine that "repellent intimacy" is a persuasive argument. The law of quarantine is affirmed. "We think the enforced separation of the races. . .neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of the laws," writes associate justice Henry B. Brown in a 7-1 ruling. The main point, says Justice Brown, is that "legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts." The encirclement is complete. Race quarantine becomes the custom in all the land. White supremacy is acclaimed in habit, in thought and in law.

The Shiah student of law, in attempting to reconstruct the subtext of premises and methods of reasoning that underlie these earlier books, is really attempting to reconstruct the mental process of their authors and ultimately, to read the minds of their inspirer, the true Legislator, God.

Without a fearful citizenry, politicians and unelected government bureaucrats would face unrelenting pressure to relinquish their power to the legislative process. Fear is the fuel that powers the engine of conflict of interest and fosters corruption.

Most narratives of the movement for gay equality exalt an uprising by the patrons at a New York City bar, the martyrdom of a San Francisco city councilor, and the activism against an orange juice spokeswoman in Miami. All of these played a significant role. But the spark for the revolution was lit, and its flame was tended, in Washington, DC, by a motley procession of once-secret people beginning with a stubborn astronomer who fought back against government discrimination by appealing to the country’s founding documents; an obese albino pornographer who won for his fellow gay men the same freedom to read that their heterosexual countrymen enjoyed; the African American civil rights leader who refused to let a powerful segregationist dictate the terms of his citizenship as a man who was both Black and gay; the lesbian presidential aide so deeply closeted that she never came out yet who organized the first meeting of gay activists at the White House; and the thousands of clerks, managers, secretaries, legislative directors, technology specialists, cryptologists, speechwriters, legal counsels, librarians, and other ordinary people who chose to live their lives honestly. Like

When they appeared with bills in legislative committees where he met them, he treated the sponsors of the reform measure with a sort of embalmed courtesy, heard them, promised nothing. If the reformers really controlled votes he surprised them by helping their measures. He was educating himself politically in those senatorial years. “Education,” he wrote in one of his pat phrases, “after all is the process by which each individual creates his own universe and determines its dimensions.”{

The present legislative trend is to marginalize the status of sex offenders and, in the process, to regard them as less than fully human. While this strategy may make for good politics, it is a far cry from establishing sound policy. Framing the debate much like a “war” in which innocent victims are subject to devastating assault by evil, predatory, and callous offenders does nothing but inflame emotions at the expense of promoting reasoned judgment.

governing structures with that in mind. Democracy is threatened by anything that undermines the tension-holding capacity of our “loom of government.” That threat arises, for example, when one of the three branches of government circumvents another—as when the executive trumps Congress in declaring war—thus weakening the system of checks and balances. It arises when presidential “signing statements” are issued, which have the effect of modifying “duly enacted laws” outside of the legislative process and without public knowledge. It arises again when big money dominates the political process, creating a shadow government and obscuring the true play of power in our land.

What bothered him most was the ease with which the majority of Coruscanti had acclimated to the changes. Their willingness—almost an eagerness—to surrender personal freedoms in the name of security. And a false security, at that. For while Coruscant seemed far from the war, it was also at the center of it. Now, three years into a conflict that might have been ended as abruptly as it had begun, every new security measure was taken in stride. Except, of course, by members of those species most closely associated with the Separatist agenda—Geonosians, Muuns, Neimoidians, Gossams, and the rest—many of whom had been ostracized or forced to flee the capital. Having lived for so long in fear and ignorance, few Coruscanti stopped to question what was really going on. Least of all the Senate itself, which was so busy modifying the Constitution that it had completely abandoned its role as a balancing arm of the government. Before the war, widespread corruption had stifled the legislative process. Bills languished, measures sat for years without being addressed, votes were protested and subjected to endless recounts … But one effect of the war had been to replace corruption and inertia with dereliction of duty. Reasoned discourse and debate had become so rare as to be archaic.

In reality, the various movements and removals of Indigenous peoples from the Southeast due to white invasion meant that the first western settlers were often Native Americans who migrated to spaces other than their homelands, where they encountered other tribes—longtime enemies, other displaced peoples, and groups who had long called this land home. Native peoples adjusted their oral histories and survivance strategies to incorporate their new surroundings as they had done for millennia, crafting stories that told of successful migrations and learning about the food and herbs of their new homes. As they were forced westward, the Five Tribes’ experience in Indian Territory was different from the other Indigenous migrations occurring around them. The Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Nations sought to use the settler colonial process to cast themselves as civilizers of their new home: they used the labor system that Euro-Americans insisted represented sophistication—chattel slavery—to build homes, commercial enterprises, and wealth, and they portrayed themselves as settlers in need of protection from the federal government against the depredations of western Indians, which, the Five Tribes claimed, hindered their own civilizing progress. Moreover, they followed their physical appropriation of Plains Indians’ land with an erasure of their predecessor’s history. They perpetuated the idea that they had found an undeveloped ‘wilderness” when they arrived in Indian Territory and that they had proceeded to tame it. They claimed that they had built institutions and culture in a space where previously neither existed. The Five Tribes’ involvement in the settler colonial process was self-serving: they had already been forced to move once by white Americans, and appealing to their values could only help them—at least, at first. Involvement in the system of Black enslavement was a key component of displaying adherence to Americans’ ideas of social, political, and economic advancement—indeed, owning enslaved people was the primary path to wealth in the nineteenth century. The laws policing Black people’s behavior that appeared in all of the tribes’ legislative codes showed that they were willing to make this system a part of their societies. But with the end of the Civil War, the political party in power—the Republicans—changed the rules: slavery was no longer deemed civilized and must be eliminated by force. For the Five Tribes, the rise and fall of their involvement in the settler colonial process is inextricably connected to the enslavement of people of African descent: it helped to prove their supposed civilization and it helped them construct their new home, but it would eventually be the downfall of their Indian Territory land claims. Recognizing the Five Tribes’ coerced migration to Indian Territory as the first wave among many allows us to see how settler colonialism shaped the culture of Indian Territory even before settlers from the United States arrived. Though the Cherokee ‘Trail of Tears’ has come to symbolize Indian Removal, the Five Tribes were just a handful of dozens of Indigenous tribes who had been forced to move from their eastern homelands due to white displacement. This displacement did not begin or end in the 1830s Since the 1700s, Indian nations such as the Wyandot, Kickapoo, and Shawnee began migrating to other regions to escape white settlement and the violence and resource scarcity that often followed. Though brought on by conditions outside of their control, these migrations were ‘voluntary’ in that they were most often an attempt to flee other Native groups moving into their territory as a result of white invasion or to preempt white coercion, rather than a response to direct Euro-American political or legal pressure to give up their homelands….

Global governance is commonly defined as the process of cooperation among transnational actors aimed at providing responses to global problems (those that affect more than one state or region). It encompasses the totality of institutions, policies, norms, procedures and initiatives through which nation states try to bring more predictability and stability to their responses to transnational challenges. This definition makes it clear that any global effort on any global issue or concern is bound to be toothless without the cooperation of national governments and their ability to act and legislate to support their aims. Nation states make global governance possible (one leads the other), which is why the UN says that “effective global governance can only be achieved with effective international cooperation”.

Never before has so much power been concentrated into the hands of such a few number of people, who literally can decide what countries live or die on a minute by minute basis. Never before has all the world’s wealth been subject to the decisions of such a small clique of individuals, who can, as we said earlier, completely alter the economic, sociological, and legislative landscape of entire nations as if with the wave of a magic wand. And if this situation weren’t bad enough, what makes it worse is the fact that the mental condition of this clique is such that makes the whole situation a ticking time bomb. It’s true, on it’s face, that such a threat from such a statistically small number of people makes no sense, except when considering what possibilities exist when this small number of people have the ear of the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. And, if these people can literally make the president dance on strings like a puppet, (as has obviously been the case with every American president since Lyndon Johnson) then it becomes apparent how such machinery can be made to operate. We are talking about an unprecedented concentration of the world’s power in the hands of a few individuals who are, by any standards that can be used to measure, criminally insane. They possess 90% of the world’s wealth, control the political machinery of the world’s most powerful nations, control the informational infrastructure of these nations, and are imbued with the mindset that they have a right to possess all of this by virtue of: A: Their superiority, and by B. The inferiority of the rest of the world’s inhabitants. This situation does not paint a pretty picture, even to the most shallow-minded of thinkers. When it is reduced to its irreducible minimum, the program under which such individuals have deluded themselves is that it is impossible that evil in any form may emanate from the Jewish quarter, and, conversely, that the only evil that can exist is that which works against the Jewish agenda. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the sentiments of such individuals can be turned on like a light switch in defending the agenda of their masters, sentiments completely disconnected with any true intellectual processes and which vary between loyalty for the hand that feeds them and fear of the hand that can grab them by the throat. And thus it is in this manner therefore that we must view the intellectual parrying that takes place by today’s skeptics as but a magic act, and particularly so when the other side of the coin is discussed.

As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties. If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him, ”You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said, "Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses. Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation? Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.

As a battle cry against feudalism, the demand for democracy had a progressive character. As time went on, however, the metaphysics of natural law (the theory of formal democracy) began to show its reactionary side – the establishment of an ideal standard to control the real demands of the laboring masses and the revolutionary parties. If we look back to the historical sequence of world concepts, the theory of natural law will prove to be a paraphrase of Christian spiritualism freed from its crude mysticism. The Gospels proclaimed to the slave that he had just the same soul as the slave-owner, and in this way established the equality of all men before the heavenly tribunal. In reality, the slave remained a slave, and obedience became for him a religious duty. In the teaching of Christianity, the slave found an expression for his own ignorant protest against his degraded condition. Side by side with the protest was also the consolation. Christianity told him, "You have an immortal soul, although you resemble a pack-horse." Here sounded the note of indignation. But the same Christianity said, "Although you are like a pack-horse, yet your immortal soul has in store for it an eternal reward." Here is the voice of consolation. These two notes were found in historical Christianity in different proportions at different periods and amongst different classes. But as a whole, Christianity, like all other religions, became a method of deadening the consciousness of the oppressed masses. Natural law, which developed into the theory of democracy, said to the worker: "all men are equal before the law, independently of their origin, their property, and their position; every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the people." This ideal criterion revolutionized the consciousness of the masses in so far as it was a condemnation of absolutism, aristocratic privileges, and the property qualification. But the longer it went on, the more if sent the consciousness to sleep, legalizing poverty, slavery and degradation: for how could one revolt against slavery when every man has an equal right in determining the fate of the nation? Rothschild, who has coined the blood and tears of the world into the gold napoleons of his income, has one vote at the parliamentary elections. The ignorant tiller of the soil who cannot sign his name, sleeps all his life without taking his clothes off, and wanders through society like an underground mole, plays his part, however, as a trustee of the nation’s sovereignty, and is equal to Rothschild in the courts and at the elections. In the real conditions of life, in the economic process, in social relations, in their way of life, people became more and more unequal; dazzling luxury was accumulated at one pole, poverty and hopelessness at the other. But in the sphere of the legal edifice of the State, these glaring contradictions disappeared, and there penetrated thither only unsubstantial legal shadows. The landlord, the laborer, the capitalist, the proletarian, the minister, the bootblack – all are equal as "citizens" and as "legislators." The mystic equality of Christianity has taken one step down from the heavens in the shape of the "natural," "legal" equality of democracy. But it has not yet reached earth, where lie the economic foundations of society. For the ignorant day-laborer, who all his life remains a beast of burden in the service of the bourgeoisie, the ideal right to influence the fate of the nations by means of the parliamentary elections remained little more real than the palace which he was promised in the kingdom of heaven.

Schumer’s new enemy was the calendar. Senators were about to leave town for the Fourth of July, and Labor Day was looming in the near distance. This was an election year, and he couldn’t plausibly pass the bill once Congress headed to the hustings. Working backward, Schumer‘s staff figured that they really needed to vote a bill into law before Congress fled Washington for the August recess. That left roughly a month to rush things to completion. If they were passing a normal piece of legislation, he wouldn’t have worried. But this was a massive bill, which needed to comply with the exacting constraints of the reconciliation process, enforced by a persnickety parliamentarian.

It’s set for next month. And when I say set, that’s just what I mean. Oh, it’s cost him plenty—but he’s bought the judge, the clerks, the bailiffs, their backers, their backers’ backers, a few legislators, half a dozen administrators—he’s bought the whole legal process, like a private thoroughfare, and there’s no single crossroad left for me to squeeze through to stop it!

You know that he’s going to divorce me, don’t you?” “I’ve heard some rumors about it.” “It’s set for next month. And when I say set, that’s just what I mean. Oh, it’s cost him plenty—but he’s bought the judge, the clerks, the bailiffs, their backers, their backers’ backers, a few legislators, half a dozen administrators—he’s bought the whole legal process, like a private thoroughfare, and there’s no single crossroad left for me to squeeze through to stop it!

The laws of nature not only reflected the past action of a divine creator who established the conditions necessary for orderly and regular natural processes, but the fundamental laws of nature also depend upon the ongoing and sustaining activity of a divine legislator.

Literary agent John Brockman points out another angle on the news from science: Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves. But until very recently in our history, no democratic populace, no legislative body, ever indicated by choice, by vote, how this process should play out. Nobody ever voted for printing. Nobody ever voted for electricity. Nobody ever voted for radio, the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, television. Nobody ever voted for space travel. Nobody ever voted for nuclear power, the personal computer, the Internet, email, the Web, Google, cloning, the sequencing of the entire human genome

This amounts to nothing more than misleading propaganda. The purpose is to create a climate of acceptance for the passage of legislation which will turn the majority of parents into criminals of the most heinous kind-those whose victims are defenseless children. The resulting body of law will play directly into the hands of ultraliberal social engineers as well as social activists within the professional community. The outward motive-the protection of children-conceals several more insidious ones: • The desire to expand and consolidate the power of the helping professions. At the present time, there is no law that says an individual must, under certain circumstances, submit to psychological evaluation and counseling. If they are written as is being suggested, however, antispanking laws will require exactly that. They will give helping professionals the power to define when the law has been broken, who is in need of "help" and how much, and when a certain parent's "rehabilitation" is complete. It is significant to note that in all of history the only other state to confer this much power on psychologists and their ilk was the former Soviet Union. • The desire to manipulate the inner workings of the American family; specifically, the desire to exercise significant control over the child-rearing process. Take it from someone who was, at one time, similarly guilty, a significant number of helping professionals possess a "save the world" mentality. They believe they know what's best for individuals, families, and children. The only problem, as they see it, is that most people are "in denial"-unwilling to recognize their need for help. This self-righteousness fuels a zealous, missionary attitude. And like the first missionaries to the New World, many helping professionals seem to believe that their vision of a perfect world justifies whatever means they deem necessary, including licensing parents, taking children away from parents they define as unfit, and the like. (For a close look at the social engineering being proposed by some professionals, see Debating Children's Lives, Mason and Gambrill, eds., Sage Publications, 1994).

Then we completed the bill review process. It was time to start thinking about the next year’s budget and legislative agenda. The best part about working in government, far and away, is that you can come up with an idea at breakfast, and if you have the power or talent to enforce it or sell it, it can be public policy by lunch. And in a big state like Illinois, it can impact millions of people. It’s both a big responsibility and a big opportunity. (One I’m not sure I had the maturity to fully appreciate during my time there.)

Even more telling was the Judicial Article’s silence on issues of judicial apportionment. The precise apportionment rules for the House, Senate, and presidential electors appeared prominently in the Legislative and Executive Articles. These rules reflected weeks of intense debate and compromise at Philadelphia and generated extensive discussion during the ratification process. Yet the Judicial Article said absolutely nothing about how the large and small states, Northerners and Southerners, Easterners and Westerners, and so on, were to be balanced on the Supreme Court. This gaping silence suggests that the Founding generation envisioned the Court chiefly as an organ enforcing federal statutes and ensuring state compliance with federal norms. Just as it made sense to give the political branches wide discretion to shape the postal service, treasury department, or any other federal agency carrying out congressional policy, so, too, it made sense to allow Congress and the president to contour the federal judiciary as they saw fit.