Last week I heard the term, “Star Chamber” and it sparked some memory of a move from long ago. So, I looked it up and found this description, “a former court of inquisition and criminal jurisdiction in England that sat without a jury and that became noted for its arbitrary methods and severe punishments, abolished 1641.” But what did have to do with the impeachment hearing today in the House of Representatives?
It seems that the Star Chamber meetings were held in secret and the accused had no representative to question the accusers. Since all the meetings were held behind closed doors, no one knew what the charges were or the evidence that supported those charges. In most cases the sentence was death without appeal. This all is very surprising because our court system today lets the defendant confront witnesses, have legal counsel and bring on opposing witnesses.
Except the House hearing on impeachment which sounds just like the Star Chamber, how can that be? Our laws, are the law of the land yet, the Star Chamber is working in secret in our capital. The whole affair against Trump is clearly an attempt to nullify the 2016 election and the will of the people. That has been clear since the day Trump was inaugurated with some Democrats calling for his removal from office even before he moved into the White House.
This fixation with impeachment is destroying the fabric of our country by only focusing on the democrat’s obsession for Trump removal from office at any cost, but not on helping the American people. Trump has done so much with total opposition from democrats. They choose to try and throw out an election result instead of working with a duly elected president. Some may say he was not duly elected but that is some kind of fantasy world. He won the electoral college which we have used since our country’s existence. The claims of interference have been debunked by investigation after investigation.
Who do these people think they are? Superior beings that know what is best for our country regardless of what the people want. How could the people ever choose someone like Donald Trump over one of theirs? These people who elected him live in fly over country, and just do not understand what is best for them. We have a plan to get them out of the arena. We will take over the voting and make president by popular vote. That way the big cities can just elect who they want and since we control all the big cities guess who wins? Is that our future???
The Constitutional Convention rejected states awarding electors by state legislatures or governors (as the majority did for decades), or by Districts (as Maine and Nebraska now do), or by letting the people vote for electors (as 48 states now do).
Anyone who supports the current presidential election system, believing it is what the Founders intended and that it is in the Constitution, is mistaken. The current presidential election system does not function, at all, the way that the Founders thought that it would.
Supporters of National Popular Vote find it hard to believe the Founding Fathers would endorse the current electoral system where 38+ states and voters now are completely politically irrelevant.
10 of the original 13 states are politically irrelevant now.
Policies important to the citizens of the 38 non-battleground states are not as highly prioritized as policies important to ‘battleground’ states when it comes to governing.
“Battleground” states receive 7% more presidentially controlled grants than “spectator” states, twice as many presidential disaster declarations, more Superfund enforcement exemptions, and more No Child Left Behind law exemptions.
The Founders created the Electoral College, but 48 states eventually enacted state winner-take-all laws.
Unable to agree on any particular method for selecting presidential electors, the Founding Fathers left the choice of method exclusively to the states in Article II, Section 1
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….”
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly characterized the authority of the state legislatures over the manner of awarding their electoral votes as “plenary” and “exclusive.”
Neither of the two most important features of the current system of electing the President (namely, universal suffrage, and the 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method) are in the U.S. Constitution. Neither was the choice of the Founders when they went back to their states to organize the nation’s first presidential election.
In 1789, in the nation’s first election, a majority of the states appointed their presidential electors by appointment by the legislature or by the governor and his cabinet, the people had no vote for President in most states, and in states where there was a popular vote, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The current winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes is not in the U.S. Constitution. It was not debated at the Constitutional Convention. It is not mentioned in the Federalist Papers. It was not the Founders’ choice. It was used by only three states in 1789, and all three of them repealed it by 1800. It is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes became dominant only in the 1880s after the states adopted it, one-by-one, in order to maximize the power of the party in power in each state. The Founders had been dead for decades
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding a state’s electoral votes.
States have the responsibility and constitutional power to make all of their voters relevant in every presidential election and beyond. Now, 38 states, of all sizes, and their voters, because they vote predictably, are politically irrelevant in presidential elections.
The National Popular Vote bill is 73% of the way to guaranteeing the majority of Electoral College votes and the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in the country, by changing state winner-take-all laws (not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but later enacted by 48 states), without changing anything in the Constitution, using the built-in method that the Constitution provides for states to make changes.
All voters would be valued equally in presidential elections, no matter where they live.
Is your middle name start with a B?…god I feel like I’m sitting in Government 102! You obviously plagiarized somebody’s words cuz nobody can remember all that…what a joke.
I guess you do not get the point of a republic, it is not a democracy. Every time the world has had a democracy it has not ended well it the same with socialism. That happens when the majority of people find they can vote themselves benefits that someone else will pay for. The vote is by state and each state’s number of electors is equal their population in relation to others. You want mob rule, where the big cities want more and want others to pay for what they want. States with big cities would rule the day. If you think all Americans want big city rule your wrong. So many of the people in the cities don’t have a clue, they just want more and someone else to pay. There is never enough money for the cities. Today the Democrat’s promise everything to the cities that why they are running so many and look at the mess they are in. So they must have more money from the people who are working to support their families. They will have to give up more of what they earn to support those in cities (We are already supporting them but they need more). The vote of Nevada would be irrelevant as Los Angeles, Chicago and New Your would elect the Prescient which is the one who promises the most. That’s not my America. A democracy will become two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner. You can bet who the wolfs are because they are always hungry but do not produce any food.
You have it all wrong. Where did you spend your professional career? In a large urban area or in a small town? People live and work in large urban areas since that is where the high paying jobs are, where there are large research facilities, and major universities. I have taken over ten cross country road trips in the last six years after moving to Mesquite and I can assure you that very little is going on in the red states. It is the blue states and the blue cities where our economy is booming. The blue states provide most of the GDP while the red states get welfare benefits. Your whole premise is 180 degrees wrong.