Amendment Needed to Check Supreme Court

I think it’s become perfectly clear in the last week that the Supreme Court is abusing its power.  It seems to me that recent decisions of the court are based on what the majority of the justices want the law to be rather than what the law is.  I think that the unchecked power of the Supreme Court has proven to be a design flaw in the Constitution. To return our government to the rule of law instead of the rule of nine appointed judges, I think we need to consider changing the Constitution to check the power of the Supreme Court.  First let me explain why we need to check the Supreme Court.  Then I’ll take a shot at proposing an amendment which I think will help.

I am in favor of gay marriage. If the court had ruled that a legal marriage performed in one state must be recognized in all states, I would have been very happy with the decision. The means Justice Kennedy used instead have badly damaged the outcome. The Supreme Court made it up in both the Obamacare case and the gay marriage case. The whole point of having written laws is that they are predictable. Everyone is supposed to be able to understand what the law is and live by it. Under current circumstances, Supreme Court rulings are more like professional football games. On any given case, the Supreme Court can change the plain meaning of the words in a statute, or the clear understanding of a Constitutional Amendment when it was ratified.

In the Obamacare case, the statute language said subsidies would only go to purchasers who used an "Exchange established by the State.” The Supreme Court added the words "or the federal government" because too many states did not set up exchanges. It's clear that the bill was very poorly drafted. In the bad old days, when Congress was the only legislature, this would have been a problem only Congress could fix. Instead, the executive and judicial branches conspired to cut Congress out of the process. This disenfranchises all of the voters who elected Senators and Representatives in 2010, 2012 and 2014. If the court had ruled that the statute meant what it said and the stayed its order until 12/31/15 to give Congress and the President time to fix the mess, that would have been a ruling on what the law is rather than what 6 justices thought Congress intended the law to be.

In the gay marriage case, the Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to rule that gay marriage was mandated by the Constitution. In 1868, when the 14th Amendment was passed, homosexual acts were illegal in every state. The state legislators who voted to ratify the 14th Amendment thought they were ratifying equal rights regardless of race. When the 14th Amendment was used to invalidate laws against mixed race marriage, this was exactly what the ratifiers would have expected. None of them would have expected that gay marriage was what they had ratified.

One way to fix this might be a Constitutional Amendment permitting a Supreme Court minority opinion to be ratified by the legislatures of a majority of states within two years of any decision. If this happens, the minority takes effect instead of the majority ruling. This would put the brakes on crazy Supreme Court rulings that ignore the plain language of the Constitution or statutes. It would also give states back some of the power they have lost to the federal government.

I think that this is reasonable. The minority opinions are learned legal opinions, so this is not a blank check for the state legislatures. The mere possibility of opinions being overturned in this fashion might promote moderation and compromise in Supreme Court Decisions.  If the threat wasn't enough, the remedy would not be easy, but it would be easier than a specific Constitutional Amendment to overturn a bad Supreme Court reading of the Constitution. It also would be easier than impeachment to correct a bad appointment.

Confederate Battle Flag is Not Appropriate on State Capitol Grounds

A recent article by David French discussed the Confederate Battle Flag that flies over the Confederate war memorial on the state capitol grounds in Columbia, South Carolina.  Mr. French discusses the subject from the point of view of his Virginia family, which fought in the American Revolution, the Confederate Army, and most of America's wars since.  My family history starts early in Virginia, similarly to Mr. French's, then veers off. My ancestors from Virginia fought in the French and Indian War, where one of them served with Col. Washington, as well as the American Revolution. However, they decided that slavery was wrong. The last slaves my family owned were freed and sent to Liberia in about 1855 with money to buy land once they got there. My family did not think it was safe for them to remain in Virginia. My family then moved to California and stayed out of the Civil War as a result.

I can understand displaying the Confederate Battle Flag only in the context of war memorials and war cemeteries. However, in both cases, I think any of the official Confederate States government flags would be less incendiary, although less acceptable to Mr. French. I think that the Battle flag on the grounds of the state capitol is not appropriate, even if it's over a Civil War memorial.  It’s ironic that the Confederate Battle flag was originally displayed over war memorials and war cemeteries because the veterans wanted to be associated with the Confederate Army and not the Confederate government.  However, now the Battle Flag has assumed a different meaning.

It is the unfortunate truth that the Confederate Battle flag was appropriated by some extremely racist bigots as the symbol of their resistance to integration. Since this misappropriation occurred during living memory, it remains the way the Battle flag is understood by the vast majority of the admittedly ignorant population. It's hard for most people to identify the dates of the Civil War within 25 or even 50 years. The details of the conflict beyond the basics are not clear to most. I don't see any way this misunderstanding can be corrected in the next 50 years. Perhaps giving the flag a rest will allow it to return to its original meaning as the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420060/confederate-flag-should-stay-charleston-shooting-debate

Baghdad's Corrupt Army Has Usual Historic Flaws

One original reason for military parades was to make sure there were physical soldiers in numbers to match the payroll. Big multiple unit parades assured soldiers were not being shuffled from unit muster to unit muster in different uniforms.

It would seem the Iraqi Army has the traditional weakness of corrupt armies with quite a few phantom soldiers on the payroll. But even worse, the soldiers who actually do show up go months without pay while their officers put the money in their own pockets. All of the best recruits are funneled into the Shiite militias, not the regular Iraqi Army.

If we weren't able to establish an effective Iraqi Army during our occupation, I don't see any way we will be able to do it under current, less favorable, conditions. We should be backing the folks with the best track record on both military effectiveness and religious and ethnic toleration, the Kurds.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420008/we-need-new-strategy-iraq-and-syria-charles-krauthammer

Cool Style or Issue Substance?

A recent article talked about how Republicans could get more younger voters because Republicans candidate were cool now.  Cool gets you a hearing, but issues get you a motivated voter. I think Republicans should emphasize that student loans wouldn't have to be forgiven if the government didn't make jobs so scarce by regulating them out of existence. Republicans should also explain that the way Obamacare was designed to work assumed young people were stupid enough to buy overpriced insurance so that "the needy" could be subsidized from what younger and healthier folks were paying. Republicans could further explain that raising the minimum wage puts teenagers out of work, especially minority teenagers.

I was a young voter (relatively) when Ronald Reagan was running in 1980. At that time, the media pundits assumed that young folks like me would not relate to the older generation Reagan. We voted for him in droves because his issues were our issues. His age didn't matter at all.

Liberals win with a divide and conquer strategy. Any of the carefully divided demographic groups that liberals cater to can be solicited for their votes. To get votes, Republicans have to talk to voters. Republican ads have to appear in media with that the target audience sees. Your issues have to be explained in a way that the audience understands. However, you don't have to pander or change positions. In fact, if your message is the same everywhere, it gives credibility to your positions. You must let voters know that you want their votes and that you see them as social equals. 

I think part of a winning presidential campaign in 2016 is mentioning all of the lies Democrats told in the last 8 years in order to get elected and to get their way on legislation. These lies were targeted at demographic groups Republicans can take away from Democrats. For example, not only was Obamacare supposed to let you keep your doctor, it was supposed to be a free lunch. Democrats were careful not to mention that young healthy people were going to pay higher rates to subsidize older and sicker people. Another example is the minimum wage, which Democrats say is designed to help poor people earn enough to support their families. Every time it goes up, more black teenagers lose any chance at part time or summer jobs. Republicans can use these and other whoopers to say they lied to you before, why should you believe their promises now? 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419691/birth-cool-republican-kristin-tate