The Glade 4.0

is Govtrack a biased source? And if not... is this **** really desirable?



If this **** is true; holy crap! What kind of ass-hattery is this? Who in the everliving **** would think this is a good idea? If it is a joke... April 1st is still a few months away.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

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You do realize this is introduced every couple of years by some asshat and it never goes anywhere (and isn't even debated), right? Happened in 2011, happened under Bush, happened under Clinton, yadda yadda yadda.

Oh, yeah, happens all the damn time ...

I was just providing an actual link to the source for DS.

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I could go for 15HJ's.

Wait, what?

Yeah, sorry, was responding to DS. It's not an Obama thing, it's just a thing thing. And this guy introduces the same bill literally every two years, and has since 1997.

"According to historian Glenn W. LaFantasie (who was opposed to repealing the amendment) of Western Kentucky University, 'ever since 1985, when Ronald Reagan was serving in his second term as president, there have been repeated attempts to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limits each president to two terms.'"

I should note, though, that we went for a very very long time sans term limits with no issues. And also that even if term limits were eliminated, the incumbent still has to be re-elected. It's not like the term limit being repealed will suddenly pave the way for a dictatorship. There's still that 'election' bit that gets in the way.

I did not think it was a particularly Obama thing, I just mean WTF is wrong with some people.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Isn't the 22nd amendment just depriving legitimate, qualified citizens of their freedom to run for public office?

It would if legitimate, qualified citizens ever ran.

But they don't, so we get what we got.

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Holy shitsnacks!

The other thing about repealing the 22nd is that if a President wants to not worry about re-election, he has to not run. Otherwise, he never gets the increased political flexibility of not needing to run.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I would like an expansion of the 22nd to include house and senate members too.

2 terms for a senator, and 3 for a house rep.

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Holy shitsnacks!

YUP

I'd like it amended to include all federal elected positions and restrict everyone to one six year term.

I'd actually rather the house runs three times in six years. There's supposed to be a difference between the Upper and lower chamber, one that has been eroded by the direct election of Senators. Let's not erode it further.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Just curious if you would pose this same question were GWB still in office ?

Yes, and have before. It doesn't matter of what political persuasion any given subject is.

It's an abrogation of freedom, plain and simple. Hell, it's was only tradition because Washington was too old to keep going after two terms and chose to not seek a third. That was codified into a law. I'm not saying this because I want Barack Obama to run for a third term (FYI: I don't), or any other particular individual to remain in Washington for extended periods. Except...they should be able to, so long as they want to keep running, and people want to keep electing them. In what other job does approval (election/re-election) result in termination?

Put another way, politicians don't elect people, people elect people.

Here's a question: on whose authority are we limiting the freedom to run for office?

On the authority of the part of the Constitution that says we can create amendments to it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So given that the 2nd amendment holds the same status, it's not a "God-given" right "endowed by the Creator," as I've seen it bandied about?

Make no mistake, I agree...amendments are not sacrosanct, and are subject to creation as times change and attitudes evolve.

Yeah, you still have to get elected to successive terms. Why don't we look at all the Congressmen and Senators who get elected term after term?

George Washington was very keen on not being king of the United States. We got by without three term presidents for the first hundred and fifty years of the country because presidents didn't run for a third term. The twenty-second amendment specifically did not apply to Harry Truman, who also declined to run for a third term. We had one president who decided two terms wasn't enough. Just one. That was enough. We didn't codify term limits into law until after we had some knucklehead who couldn't let go of power.

Washington actually was able to give up power. I know that's a strange notion, especially in our current culture of wanting to paint the founding fathers in a negative light.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Farsky:

No, it isn't. The Constitution starts "We the People" and like everything else in there, it's created and maintained by society. The same applies to the First Amendment and the Fourth and everything else. The fact is, however, that amendments are part of the Constitution and carry no more and no less weight than parts that are not contained in Amendments. Until and unless any of them are repealed, they are the way we do things. In point of fact, it's pretty much irrelevant whether the Second Amendment is a God-given right or created by society; the simple fact is that it is not different from any other right therein.

The Declaration of Independence talks about "endowed by their Creator" which is true, but doesn't carry any legal weight. God has not helld forth on exactly what rights He has endowed people with except, possibly, the concept that all should be equal under the law. The Constitution gives to Caesar what is Caesar's the the DOI to God what is God's.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Maybe because the President is not a Congressman or Senator. It wasn't really a problem prior to the 22nd Amendment; FDR was the only exception.



You mean, the current trend of not pretending they were better, smarter, or took a **** in a different manner than everyone else? Or pretending that they had some unified 'intent' they all agreed on? Those trends?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

All laws limit freedom in some way. I'm not free to shoot someone in face, unless I have a reasonable fear they are immediately going to do the same or worse to me.

This is generally agreed to be a good thing because people's freedom to not be shot in the face is more important than my freedom to shoot them. (Yes it also matches up with Christian morality, but that's not central to the discussion)

We've decided collectively, through the legal process (for good or ill) that people's freedom to not be ruled over by a small percentage of voting electorate (how many people as a percentage of the potential electorate voted for Obama in 2012 or Bush in 2000?) for an infinite period of time is more important than an individual's right to run for the office of President as many times as he/she wants.

These are the kind of value judgments that Representative forms of government make. Maybe they should be applied to Senators and Representatives as well, but they have set to do so since the Senators and Representatives are generally the ones involved. Also a senator is ~ 1/100th as powerful as a President. A representative would be ~1/435th as powerful. This assumes of course that all branches of Federal government are equally powerful, which may or may not be true, but I think the point remains: A Congress-sitter is one among many, the President has the power of his/her branch almost completely within His/Her person.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Also I think all of this wouldn't be as important if the Federal Government as a whole was operating on a smaller scope of issues.


Also DE I would contend that they were at least smart enough to realize they were as stupid and divided as anyone else and as a result did the smart thing of trying to limit the amount of power any one of them (or anyone to come after them) could weild. Unfortunately their words have been twisted in ways that I doubt even the smartest people in existence in that time could have forseen

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I agree with that. I would also point out, however, that the compromises and number of proposed plans that were put forth in creating the Constitution is a matter of well-recorded fact, and even once compromise was reached, it was not a cakewalk to get it ratified. The idea that there was some unified 'intent' for the document is laughable, partly because the signers were not all in agreement and for the most part wanted what they saw as best for their state. The other part of that is that, since they were not kings or nobles, but were representing the people, is that the people in the late 18th century were not any more of all one mind than people are now.

There were certainly broad areas of agreement, but that does not mean we can divine any unifying 'intent' from what was written.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Their unifying intent, if they had one at all was no one person should have too much power. Of course they even compromised on that level. There were people who thought the document gave too much power (Jefferson) and others not enough (Hamilton irrc).

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"