The McConnell Amendments

THE FRAMERS provided a way to amend the Constitution in Article V.  The standard method is by a two-thirds vote in the House and in the Senate.  Then three-fourths of the Legislatures of the several States must approve.

     The senior Senator from Kentucky and Majority Leader has laid out his way of amending the Constitution—making stuff up.  In an election year, the alternative method appears.

     On February 13, 2016, a duly elected President was not permitted to make an appointment, when the opportunity arose, based on a remarkable statement—“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice”—which was used to deny a hearing and a vote on the nomination of Merrick Garland.  But the self-styled “conservatives” again ran afoul of the Constitution, which they supposedly revere, when their actions are compared with those of the Framers in regard to “the nature of the agency of the Senate in the business of appointments.”  For Alexander Hamilton contradicts the McConnell Rule:  “There will, of course, be no exertion of CHOICE  on the part of the Senate.”  And Hamilton shows that what the Majority Leader did was an abuse of power:  “They might even entertain a preference to some other person, at the very moment they were assenting to the one proposed, because there might be no positive ground of opposition to him....”  (The Federalist Papers, No. 66; emphasis added)  Thus, the “one basic check on a runaway Court: presidential elections,” which Professor Bruce Ackerman noted, was swept aside.

     In 2020, the Majority Leader tackled and sidelined Anglo-American jurisprudence by changing the inherent meaning of a word—trial.  Henceforth, despite the centuries-old definition, there need only be opening and closing statements because witnesses and documents have been benched.

     Yet if, as Chief Justice John Marshall said in Marbury v. Madison, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is,” how can his successor sit silently—in a court of impeachment over which he presides—and watch as the senior Senator from Kentucky changes the inherent meaning of a trial?

     Nevertheless, on the thirty-first of January, Republican Senators marched over to the Archives and began spitting on the Constitution.  They ignored the Declaration and made the gentleman from New York George III.  They decided to make the world safe for monarchy—and, thereby, repudiated George Washington.

     Mitch McConnell has overturned a constitutional system of checks and balances concerned with means and ends.  He mocks the oath.

     “Life imitates art,” according to an old saying.  But Mark Twain was right when he said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

     In “Tribunal,” an episode on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Chief O'Brien was arrested and faced   justice on Cardassia Prime.

     “Guilty,” says the Judge as she strikes the gavel.  “Let the trial begin.”

      Yet, even under such a contrary system, there were witnesses.

(c)2020 Marvin D. Jones.  All rights reserved.   

https://www.marvindjones.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-least-dangerousduring-good-behavior.html