SixNein said:
There is also a concept called the judicial branch of the United States government. If the president declares the debt limit unconstitutional, the question will go before the supreme court, and the supreme court will decide if the president is correct or incorrect. The supreme court will have the final decision on the issue.
I disagree with you that Obama is doing something unconstitutional.
Right. Courts hear cases, not just make random decisions at the bequest of a government official. For the SCOTUS to evaluate a case, it needs to have merit and be wrung through the lower courts. Is the President going to sue the federal government to get his case heard? The President mandating a fiscal matter seems crazy to me. talk2glenn's run down in post #90 is put more eloquently than how I would describe how 'declaring the debt celing unconstitutional' would neccessarilly have to go - if done legally.
While I'm pretty neutral on the law myself, the President just declaring 'DADT unenforcable' seems like an abuse of power as well. There's proper channels to evaluate and dismantle policy if that is what he wants to do. The President is not King, he's one cog in a machine. Unfortunately, the Presidental importaince is fed to him by an overzealous media for the last few decades looking for stories. (one of my biggest gripes about ESPN is their focus on the superstars, I see this as an alegory to how the media handles many of the political storys)
Are any of these things impeachable? I doubt they're extreme enough to warrant the strain on the American people, but according to rule of law and the structure of our government it seems to me like President Obama tries daily to tug at his Constitutional chains (Libya without congressional consent, declaring laws unenforcable, appointing cabinet-level 'czars' without congress, etc - basically ignoring congress as much as possible). It will take something more obviously egregious for it to be possible, politically, for the President to be impeached. But let me emphasise that I'm not advocating for Presidental impeachment because the case would be a little weak and cause more harm than good.
ThomasT said:
I'm not sure what you mean by not having to worry about what people think. They wouldn't have to spend time schmoozing for bucks and campaigning and that sort of thing. But they would still be accountable for their actions insofar as any improprieties might be concerned. Outside of clear cut corruption, which would hopefully be dealt with by their peers, isn't there a mechanism for initiating referenda to vote an elected official out of office if people think that he's doing a bad job?
By the way, I also don't think it's a good idea to allow any individual to hold more than one national public office.
And I'm not worried about there being a shortage of intellectually qualified candidates. It's a really big country.
Yes, there are lots of idealogues in the US, but I don't see how term limits would entail them having any more of a voice in the way things are actually run than they have now.
The recall system I feel is flawed in a fundamental way. To all of the whiners in MI and WI - suck it up. They were elected fairly to start and did nothing illegal. Basically unions campaigned and these are special interest driven recalls and special elections. How much government money is being wasted because the biggest special interest in the country got crapped on? (if you want to attack corruption, look there) That's the problem with recalls - the time and effort of government gets wasted on it. The same applys to single term limits in your situation - don't like someone, recall them as enforcement! So you've effectively made that individual campaign again in the middle of the session because of a recall vote. It doesn't seem efficient and any waste that would be saved from eliminating corruption would just be reinjected as waste because we'd need an IRS-sized election comission to deal with all of the petty recalls. Our elections are often already only won by a few percentage points, is the disruption caused to government worth the popularity change of 2%? Lastly, I think term limits would also encourage popularity contests more than actual policy decisions. When there's little legislative history to go on, all there will be is name dropping and mud slinging. Who's going to have the well known names? Likely a business leader or someone without the public interest in mind. They'll already be 'corrupt' (maybe not in an evil sense), and be working towards their own goals without any recourse.
Like I've said before - the face value idea of term limits is great, but I think it introduces many more problems than it attempts to solve.
