Quick thought:
The U.S. Americans are practising a thing called "recall". Recently, a couple state senators were replaced by special elections that were triggered by petitions (that met a certain quantity requirement).
This made me think about something.
How about an automatic triggering of a special (potential recall) election for all federal politicians who supported military action without obvious self-defence character (= repelling an invading army, defending in air war or breaking a naval blockade) or unambiguously worded UNSC approval?
They wouldn't have to fear much if they have much popular support (= almost a necessity for successful modern warfare), after all!
S Ortmann
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I wouldn't be at all suprised if they would bicker about what is "in self-defense" they might take a very broad view of what self-defense means.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution - War Powers Resolution.
That's why I spelled it out for this context.
ReplyDelete"...obvious self-defence character (= repelling an invading army, defending in air war or breaking a naval blockade)..."
There's no reason why a constitution couldn't define it properly, too.
Example, defending in air war:
ReplyDeleteal qaeda used planes against us on 9-11 declaring war as they say, they have camps in afghanistan they used against us and are still using, so we invade. Now that might work, but then intelligence says iraq is helping al qaeda, we know last time they attacked us in afghanistan and we went to war then (so how is it different now they might say), now we "have" them in iraq plotting against us so we must go and get them. Congress passes a bill to invade iraq.
CNN post were Osama declares war on US, http://articles.cnn.com/2002-08-19/us/terror.tape.main_1_bin-international-islamic-front-osama?_s=PM:US here we have them declaring war on us, the "invading army" are the terrorist they are sending which we have to repel.
No need for the people to vote we stayed within the law. See what I am getting at S.O.?
Now George Washington (a major founding father, he was and is a very important guy in the US) wanted advising on if he should sign a bill passed by Congress that would create a banking corporation. Two of the men Washington asked for constitutional advice were Thomas Jefferson (opposed it) and Alexander Hamilton (for it), both men had major issues with the advice the other man gave and people have not stopped fighting over things like this since. One would think Washington would know if it was ok or not, but even he wasn't sure.
I don't trust them to carry it out in good faith, they have so many times broken the laws that I just don't trust them anymore to be fair and just. It is hard to hold them to account for these things, party not withstanding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html
Do you have any idea how stupid the term "US Americans" is?
ReplyDeleteOf course you do.
to the other Anon: I assume he made a typo people do, get over it.
ReplyDelete"Do you have any idea how stupid the term "US Americans" is?"
ReplyDeletei think the Mexicans or Argentinians would probably not find that term so stupid...
(Cont.) what i mean is there is no point in doing that, lets stick with a discussion of the topic and not trivial things like typos/errors that don't really affect the post we all know what he meant.
ReplyDeleteI didn't write "US Americans", but "U.S. Americans".
ReplyDeleteU.S.Americans is actually a quite literal translation of the correct German term and in addition to that not uncommon for when non-U.S. citizens describe the nationality.
There's a North America, a South America and other means of describing regions with "... America".
U.S. citizens usually believe that "Americans" is a sufficient description of themselves, while many other people disagree.
Besides; http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/US_American
It was fully intentional - but the choice is really off-topic.
"US American (plural US Americans)
ReplyDelete1.(rare) An inhabitant or citizen of the United States of America, as opposed to others who might be called Americans."
" Argentine President Calls Americans ‘Americanos’"
http://www.argentinepost.com/2010/02/argentine-president-calls-americans-americanos.html
"As many native English speakers know from personal experience, some Argentines – and, of course, some Latin Americans – take offense at such use of the term “americano,” believing (correctly) that when formally used in Spanish it refers to all residents of the Americas, not just citizens of the United States.
Like it or not, however, many – perhaps most – Latin Americans, particularly those living closer to the U.S. in countries like Costa Rica, Colombia or Mexico, commonly refer to U.S. citizens as “americanos.” The vast bulk of Argentines I know use the term this way. I know very few Argentines who regularly use the term to refer to all residents of Latin America."
Censorship of arbitrary opinions by way of electoral law?
ReplyDeleteI must say I was dismissive at first, but then I realized it could become quite entretaining. I have one objection thought, for the proposal to work properly the representatives must be shot out of parlament by their chairs the moment they vote in favour of one of the disallowed resolutions. This messing about with the electorate does not work well with the automatic aspects of the law. One can easily imagine that the representatives would simply trigger so many votes that they would have to be cumpled up and voted upon on a yearly or even bi- or triyearly basis, and then you basically have general elections anyway!
(Other obvious problems include the operative defenition of "supporting" and the possibility that if you can trick your rival to support something they will automatically have to deal with a election campain. This last possibility strongly drives the expansion of no-go subject to give more oppotunities to trap oponents.)
Big fan of recalls, but only based on a public appetite for one.
ReplyDeleteNo parliament can bind another.
A constition that limits political action the public wants is little but a dictatorship of the dead.
TrT; there are usually many constitutional limitations for the legislative body.
ReplyDeleteI don't see why a mere mandatory election triggered by a voluntary legislative action would be a greater retrenchment of the parliament.