Posted on 01/04/2011 4:11:17 PM PST by neverdem
The short answer to the question above is: Yes.
Here is the back story. The elections this past November were truly historic for those who love freedom. The Tea Party, a grassroots libertarian insurgency cobbled together from disaffected Republicans and libertarians, managed not only to strike fear into the Establishment, but actually to throw off the Establishment's hand-picked candidates in favor of those supporting limited government. The Republicans were able to ride this wave, taking control of the House and achieving a filibuster-positive number in the Senate. What many voters may not have known, though, is that if the Constitution we cherish were still in its original form with respect to the Senate, they would never have been able to vote for Rand Paul or Marco Rubio, and that would have been a good thing.
The 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for the direct popular election of senators, was enacted in 1913, at the height of the Progressive Era. Originally, the Constitution had provided for state legislatures to appoint U.S. senators, a realistic reflection that the Constitution was a compact of sovereign states. It meant that senators would not be focused on public campaigning; they could do what they were elected to do. They would represent the interests of the states that sent them -- not the people in the states, but the states as sovereign entities.
The Founding Fathers' original intent in providing for indirect election of senators was to place a strong check on the power of the federal government. At the federal table, the people were to be represented by the House of Representatives, the nation as a nation was to be represented by the president, and the states as sovereign entities were to be represented by the senators whom the states sent to Washington...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Several years ago I predicted to myself that the Constitution will one day soon be ruled un-Constitutional. Sounds absurd, right? Just watch it happen.
If the USSC said there is a Constitutional separation of church and state is the Declaration of Independence un-Constitutional ?
This has been something that’s irritated me for a while now. There’s no need for a bicameral federal legislature if they’re representing the same interests. Most states don’t need a bicameral legislature either but all Nebraska have them.
...has there been a constitution when it was adopted, under today’s absurd interpretation, probably so.
Judge Nepolitano jumps the shark with this one by arguing that amending the constitution via a device defined in the constitution is unconstitutional.
If the 17th were repealed, enabling the Senate to again function as it was intended, there would be no need for gauze and dressing fixes like the “Repeal Amendment”.
True, thats why I think we should go back to state legislatures electing Senators to represent the state.
Jack,
Ya really oughta quit drinkun that stuff. It’s starting to show in yer logic.
The fact that each state has an equal number of senators still gives an advantage to smaller states.
The main point of a bicameral legislature is to make it more difficult to make laws thereby protecting liberty, IMHO.
The Constitution is so well written that the liberals can't contort their ideals into it.
My understanding of the Constitution is it has 44 Biblical principles in so Waxman you are about to melt.
I think that’s a valid concern, and that’s usually the reason given, but it also makes it impossible to reform anything.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
The Constitution only seems to REQUIRE direct election of Senators. In reality ways around that interpretation were discovered. For example, the Tenth Amendment clearly established the sovereignty of the states so they went ahead and did it any way they wanted and referenda and direct election were in place in a number of states well before the amendment changing the way they would be elected.
Another aspect of that is that the congress is on the federal payroll.
Take them off the federal payroll and put them on their own states’ payroll. They have truly forgotten for whom they work and this would help remind them.
Well, this part isn't P.C., I'm surprised the liberals haven't tried to have it stricken yet:
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
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