Try this one:

The president and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, If, on any such nomination, the Senate has taken no action, either yea or nay, within 90 days of receiving the nomination, the nominee shall be appointed, in like manner as if the Senate had approved, unless the president's term shall have expired, in which case he shall not be appointed.

Arrrrgh. Strike the words "and he" from the first sentence.

Preview is my friend...

I've had a couple of amendments in mind myself.

1)all laws short of constitutional amendments shall have a sunset provision. No sunset provision will be more than 20 years in length.

2)No law shall even be *looked at* by congress unless it is presented to congress by popular petition from the common people. A minimum number of signatures from each state will be required to make the petition valid.

3)If a law passes its sunset provision, it has to be RE submitted by popular petition before being considered for renewal. None of this "revolving door" crap that keeps laws on the books because the politicians think the common people have forgotten about it's sunset provision.

If the founding fathers had been granted enough foresight, I believe they would have added those in the first bloody time around.

All Congressional votes must be roll call votes and recorded to what each member voted (yea, nay, abstain, absent). Voting must be public record.

Oh, and dock their pay by the number of 'absent' votes.

all speeches by politicians must begin with:

"gentlemen, gentlemen we must protect our phoney baloney jobs"

No one with a law degree may run for public office. This will in it's self remove 99.7% of the thieves and low lifes found in government today.

Snake - And it would make laws easier to read and understand.

1. "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." (note the omission of the prefaratory clause)

2. "No bag limits on liberals."

1. The twelve-year term limits shall also apply to judges. To maintain continuity on the Supreme Court, the longest-serving three justices shall be replaced every four years.

2. Judges can be impeached under the same rules as the President.

3. The interstate commerce clause shall apply only and strictly to interstate commerce - the actual transaction between a buyer in one state and a seller in another. The federal government shall have no power to regulate or control any thing or person except during that time when it is crossing a state line as part of a commercial transaction. This limit does not apply to the powers granted to the government elsewhere in the Constitution.

In the discussion on term limits, I fall to the "pro" side of the argument, but with the following provision.

Any elected officeholder, except for the President and Vice President, so beloved by his or her constituents, may win re-election and override said term limits, by winning 60% or more of the popular vote.

This exception would defang almost every argument of the "anti" term limit crowd regarding "the people's choice" and the "will of the people", etc., ad nauseum.

And RH Junior? Your point #2 flies in the face of what a duly elected Representative is there to do. Your proposal effectively renders them "order takers", formalizing the wet-finger-in-the-wind practice that passes for "leadership" these days.

Let them do their job, and if they screw it up, vote 'em out.

Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX

Going to have to disagree with some of the proposals that are offered here.

Original Post
Tax forms. I prefer to keep taxes at least somewhat complicated -- or at least the corporate taxes. Corporate taxes and sales and use taxes are great levers for the government to use to encourage certain sorts of behaviors.

From comments
Appointments clause. Not a bad idea. However, I would make the period 120 days that Congress is in session, rather than calendar days.

Petitions requirement. Utterly unworkable. This does a couple things. First, it puts way too much power in the hands of lobbyists, who excel at faux grass-roots campaigns. Secondly, it leads to incredibly inefficient and unworkable government. Does this mean that each year's budge omnibus bill has to be submitted to Congress by petition? Horribly inefficient.

Roll-call votes. Again, unworkable. Might be nice for major bills, but do we really need a roll-call vote on a motion to adjourn for the day? Also, this provision is more appropriate for rules of order than for a Constitution.

Judge term limits. I strongly oppose this. Judges need to be able to stand above politics. Helps them do their jobs.

I like the following addendum to term limits.

Any elected official who achieves his office's term limit shall be requred to pass a plebicite referendum from his constituency as to wheter or not he should be drug out into the street and shot before being allowed to run for any other elected office.

Pennywit - but judges already don't stand above politics. What solution do you propose?

Pennywit - I don't think the tax system should be used for social engineering. That is how it got so complicated in the first place.

I agree with you on petitions. It would be a mess.

I've rethought some of my term linits also. I think the president should be elected to one six year term. That way he wouldn't spend the last two years of his first term running for a second term.

Each matter put to a vote in congress shall have no more than 2500 characters, including spaces, in its text.

Denny, I like those ammendments.
Christopher, what a horrifying thought! Here we are trying to 'free' Iraq and you are suggesting we need a Dictator of our own. Perish the thought!

Denny I agree, there should be NO re-election of Presidents. Can we get that ammendment passed NOW?

All Foreign Aid
comes w/ strings
The first of which would be
Public Acknowledgment by the recipient Govt.
to the people of the receiving nation.

Judges don't always stay above politics ... but because of their life terms, they have the ability to stay above politics. I know that I'd avoid meddling in politics if I were a judge ...

If you look at Justice Breyer's dissent in Bush v. Gore, you'll find warnings on what happens when judges start meddling in elections. If you don't mind my rehashing that old argument, I would have thrown the whole mess to the House of Representatives as per the 12th Amendment.

To keep judges above politics I would cite Breyer's dissent frequently when arguing "political question" cases at the appellate level. I would also enter into American legal scholarship the notion that a court needs to stay above politics as much as possible so that it can preserve its credibility for such questions as due process and civil rights -- divisive issues in which the courts are truly thought the final arbiters of the law.

I wouldn't just use taxes for social engineering. They're also used for economic engineering and regulation.

Take, for example, the question of cars and the attendant pollution. If the government doesn't use taxes or some other lever to regulate the industry, then in the short term the automotive industry will produce cars that pollute heavily, as these are the least expensive vehicles to produce.

There will be little market demand for low-pollution cars, at least at first, because the harmful effects of the pollution aren't readily apparent, and don't always affect the market players directly.

However, if you institute a taxation or regulation scheme and use the fees collected thereby to clean up the pollution, you can force the automotive market to internalize the costs of pollution.

--|PW|--

Pennywit - Sigh! Why do we have to keep going over this? It was the Florida Supreme Court (all Dimocrats, BTW) who meddled in the election. They tried to change Florida's election laws. The USSC told them to follow their own election laws, to whit, if there was gonna be a recount, it had to be statewide. The Gore camp only wanted to do the recount in selected counties, which even if it had been done, he still would have lost as all subsequent recounts by various organizations, most of them liberal, showed.

In New Jersey, the New Jersey Supreme Court changed their election laws to allow Lautenburg to run after Toricelli dropped out. Once again we had judges, mostly Dimocrats, legislating from the bench. The USSC refused to take the case because of all the bullshit that they went through in the Florida fiasco. I guess we could say the the Dimocrats "stole" that election since by the logic the Dimocrats used in Florida, Lautenburg was illegally handed the elction by New Jersey judges.

We don't need taxes to make automakers produce low polluting cars. In most metropolitan areas, cars need to be inspected for emission standards. That has nothing to do with the tax system. If the cars cannot pass emission standards, people won't buy them.

Our tax code is entirely too complicated already.

Denny 1. Rather than lifetime term limits, I'd say no immediate reelection for anybody. Even better if politicians have to spend a year in the private sector before seeking any public office, but I can't see how to write that in such a way that it could be honestly enforced.

Denny 6. Again, how do you define "lobbyist" to make it stick?

Denny 10. This was proposed in the Gingrich Congress, and the Senator from Low Earth Orbit bleated, "But that would make most of what we do illegal!" I'll always love him for that.

More proposals.

Amendments to this Constitution shall be proposed by the legislature or convention of any State. (Only the threat of secession has ever prompted Congress to propose tying its own hands.)

Representatives and Senators, before voting in favor of any Bill, shall certify that they have read and understand the Bill in question.

One member may be appointed to the Supreme Court during each Term of Congress, regardless of the number of vacancies that may or may not occur. This maintains the expertise of the Court without ossifying, and allows incremental reform of the Court without making it a weathercock.

The President shall be elected by approval ballot. If no candidate is approved by two-thirds of the electors, the candidate with the most approving votes shall serve a term of one year, with limited powers. The President shall appoint the Vice-President from among those presidential candidates who win majority approval.
Approval voting means each voter votes yes or no on each candidate, rather than being required to pick a single favorite. This eliminates the spoiler effect and makes primaries redundant.

Roger Ritter 2: Judges are already subject to impeachment like any other Feral officer. It does happen occasionally.

I don't think I'll ever agree with either side on Bush v. Gore. In actuality, I don't particularly care that Gore lost. I just wish procedures had been followed.
Denny --

The cars are just a hypothetical, but your reply is interesting. You believe that rather than attempting to encourage good behavior or bad behavior through taxes, governments should instead engage in regulatory schemes. The emissions standard that you cited is one such scheme ... and the enforcement is paid for not through a tax, but through a user fee in the form of inspections. Some would argue that that's a tax by a different name.

But I would note that the government already tries to use taxes to encourage positive behavior. On an individual level, there's the "married filing jointly" tax category. Then there's the deduction for charitable donations. The list goes on and on. (IIRC, there's even a deduction in there for owning a hybrid car. Or has that been revoked?)

I find taxes and user fees, and exemptions therefrom, to be a useful way to force a market to internalize externalities.

Now, the issue of activist judges. Congress actually has another lever available to it if it truly feels that judges have gotten out of hand. Yes, there's the impeachment power, but that's not really intended for anything but criminal judges.

Congress can also add more seats to the federal Supreme Court (and lower courts) and persuade the president to appoint jurists with "proper" views. This would can dilute the power/influence of existing judges.

Of course, I'm getting way off topic here.

My own constitutional amendments:

Abolish the electoral college. The electoral college was originally established partially to prevent the big states from gaining too much power over the small states, partially as an administrative tool (easier to certify the votes of electors on a national level than to hold a national election), and partially to insulate the federal government from the immediate passions of the people. In today's environment, the electoral college is a relic. It only serves to exaggerate the margin of a presidential victory, especially given the "winner take all" custom on a state-to-state basis. With modern mass communication, the bookkeeping functions of the electoral college are outdated.

Clarify the Second Amendment. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Is the "well-regulated milita" meant to be a restrictive or nonrestrictive clause? Why is there a comma after the word "arms?" Is this dicta? Enforceable law? I favor an amendment that says, "The people of the United States shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and that right shall not be suspended or infringed." Or perhaps an amendment that signs up gun owners for the militia. I just want clarity in the Constitution.

Allow non-natives to run for president. This provision of the Constitution is outdated. I have no problem with a non-native running for president. Ah-nold 2012!

Bush/Gore should not have entered this debate, but, procedures were followed. The Dimocrats tried to steal the election by trying to create new procedures.

I was mainly talking about the income tax. It should be simplified. The average person should not have to hire someone to do his taxes.

I have no problem with user fees. Those are pay for use taxes. Gas taxes should pay for roads. Actually the payment for emmision testing is not a tax or a user fee. The requirement for a car to pass emission testing to renew the registration is a government regulation and has nothing to do with the tax code.

I will grant you that charitable deductions are good, but they have to be very large, or piggy backed on top of mortgage interest deductions to beat the standard deduction. So when do we stop? How many deductions do we allow before the tax code becomes too complicated? Once again, the average person should be able to do his taxes on one form in less than 30 minutes. The purpose of the income tax should be raising revenue, not social engineering.

I believe the Founders had it correct on judges. The advise and consent of the Senate is a good idea, but the Dimocrats are perverting that by doing something that has never been done in the entire history of our republic: Filibustering judges. I believe the judiciary has gone to the left. I think more conservative judges need to be appointed to balance out the judiciary. This is what the Founders intended. I do not believe that this will mean the repeal of Roe v. Wade and all the other disasters that the left screams about.

I agree with you on the Second Amendment.

The Electoral College I haven't decided on yet. In some cases it does give smaller states a disproportionate voice in presidential elections, but that was the compromise reached during the writing of the Constitution.

I also agree on allowing non-natives to run for president with certain requirements like being a citizen for over ten years. After all, I think Arnold is a better American than either Bill or Hillary Clinton, or John Fonda Kerry, for that matter.

I'll leave Bush/Gore behind with this thought: I don't argue that Gore or Bush should have won the election. In fact, Bush probably did win; if I remember correctly, seven of the nine justices agreed that something was rotten in Denmark, but only five could reach a decision about how to clean it up.

I don't think I can provide a nonbiased answer on the tax deductions (after all, complicated tax laws mean that I, as an aspiring lawyer, stand to make a good sum of money), but I would ideally like to see the U.S. shift more of its tax scheme to a consumption-based model than the current income-based model. Additionally, I would like to see specific taxes tied to specific costs. If car use causes excess pollution and requires highway maintenance, pay for the costs with a gas tax and tolls, and so forth.

In terms of judges, I agree that using procedural tricks to nullify judicial appointments is a new low ... whether that practice emanates from the right side OR left side of the aisle. I've thought sometimes about how I would handle some of these issues as a judge, and I realized that I would look to the Constitution and to case law before I look to my own heart.

Doesn't mean I won't raise a big stink in the dicta if I think there's a miscarriage of justice; I would be more than willing to lecture the legislature via my opinions. Doesn't mean my opinions would be binding, though.

--|PW|--

so - At the end of this discussion we are close to agreement. A consumption tax would be a way to go, and the current one sponsored by John Lindner of Georgia has rebates built in for low income people. Since "the rich" consume more that the poor, they would then be paying their "fair share". I am a strong proponent of user fees.

As for judges, all I ask for is that they follow the Constitution and not invent things that are not in it. Altho' I am morally opposed to abortion, but do not think it should be outlawed, (I wrote a post about that and caught a lot of flack) I see nothing in the Constitution about it one way or another. That is just one example. There are many more.

One of the problems with constitutional interpretation is that everybody has a slightly different view of the Constitution and how it should be interpreted.

I'm of the "living Constitution" school -- I believe that the document and its attendant case law can be re-examined over time -- the Lopez decision, for example, narrowed several decades of interstate-commerce rulings in favor of a new standard.

Other people demand a hyper-strict reading of the Constitution. The funny part about these people is that many of them, when they see nothing in the Constitution that conflicts with their values, will insist that their values must, by default, be correct.

I tend toward an incrementalist approach, myself. Rather than a constant march of sweeping decisions, I prefer narrowly tailored rulings that build upon precedent established in previous cases.

And, yes, we do seem to have reached an accord on some issues. When it comes to taxes, deficits, and government programs, I find myself less concerned with the programs themselves than with the mechanics of how the programs are financed and their basis in law as well as the presence of procedures.

Nice talking with you, and an enjoyable blog.

--|PW|--

I still stand by point #2. Legislators ARE SUPPOSED TO BE ORDER-TAKERS. Their job is to obey the interests of the people,and institute laws insomuch as said laws do not violate the constitution.
What is the consequence of our current system? Millions upon millions of laws that run directly against the will of the people, which are proposed, written, discussed, and finally voted through without so much as a by-your-leave from the constituency.

Limiting congressmen to debating and voting on laws which are submitted by petition from the people would

1)End the ongoing glut of unneccessary legislation
which threatens to strangle the nation. Every year, thousands of laws are written, haggled, handed around and pushed through. THOUSANDS. It has reached the point that no physical activity can take place that does not violate SOME law written down SOMEWHERE. We do not NEED this.

2)Force the congressman to go back to their constituencies. Currently, congressmen treat their constituencies like the fat chick they left back home--- desperately trying to forget she exists while they butter up the sexy little special interest they met at the White House soiree.
With the Petition provision, they would be forced to get at least a bare minimum of approval from the people they CLAIM to represent, before running off to the senate or house of reps with their new brilliant idea for all the rest of us.
They could *write up* as many as they liked, but they'd still have to get the people to sign off on it before they could even THINK of voting on it.

3)It would keep the damned fools from wasting so much time on bullshit. How many thousands of unneeded, unwanted, silly-ass bills and laws are shuttling around the Senate floor at this very moment? I don't know about you, but I'd like my representatives and senators to have their FULL AND UNDIVIDED attention on things like national security, say, rather than diddling about over things like whether to replace the bald eagle as the national bird with the Southwestern Spotted Grackle.