Just a Half Order of Constitution, I’m Dieting

Jan Ireland

Liberals are approaching the Constitution of the United States as if it were a menu item. They want to order a la carte (do please pardon the French reference), deigning to indulge what agrees with them; haughtily sending back to the kitchen what does not. Like uncouth dinner patrons careless of advanced utensil knowledge, they show capricious acquaintance with the idea of rule of law. Instead of a stately dinner, pleasing to palate and mind alike, we’re subjected to a free-for-all, with graspy hands sneakily reaching for the last delicacy or dessert. The trend is burgeoning in many areas.

A three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently halted a constitutionally-correct recall election in California, ruling that certain voting machines could ‘possibly’ disenfranchise minority and poor voters in the future. This nebulousness was allowed to negate the constitutional mandate that the election be held within 80 days.

Knowing that the Supreme Court would likely hear and summarily reverse this decision, the full panel reversed the ruling itself. Still, the ‘most-reversed court’ in the nation managed to take a notch out of the Constitution belt.

Polls show 70% of the general public favor term limits. It’s not surprising that legislators and those around them do not. Two year House of Representatives terms are laid out in the Constitution, yet Rep. Charles Stenholm, D-TX, and Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-MD, want an actual Constitutional Amendment to double that. They claim the founding fathers would be ‘appalled’ at the fundraising necessary to get reelected, and complain of the accompanying time wasted. But the House constitutionally is designed to be the body most responsive to the people, requiring that everyone run for reelection every two years, with turnover balanced by the longer terms of the Senate. Stenholm and Bartlett, instead of focusing on doing the best possible job for two years and getting out, think that the Constitution must be changed so they can more easily remain in office. They are suggesting stomach-stapling surgery for the Constitution.

University of California Regent Ward Connerly hopes to make government colorblind, supposedly the goal of our decades of political correctness. His Racial Privacy Initiative would require government to see ‘people’ rather than hues of skin. He visited Michigan recently, where until the recent Supreme Court ruling, the University of Michigan was giving more admission points for skin color than perfect SAT scores. Michigan Democrat Representative John Dingell, uninvited, sent Mr. Connerly a letter saying “take your message of hate and fear, division and destruction and leave. Go home and stay there, you’re not welcome here.” A United States Congressional Representative seems unaware of Mr. Connerly’s First Amendment right of free speech. The Constitution had its sports headband pulled down over its mouth.

California voters in the 1990’s approved open primaries, allowing crossover voting by democrats and republicans. Among states this is a common practice that is said to encourage moderates to run. The democrat party in California sued to stop it, however, eventually getting their way with the California Supreme Court – thereby negating the law that had been passed by the people. The Constitution was being told by the liberal judges that it was overweight.

Nevada voters twice passed a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds supermajority vote to raise any taxes. But Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn wanted the largest tax increase in the state’s history. The Nevada teacher’s union was salivating for $860 million additional dollars, a 35% increase in the school budget, which would balloon it to $1.65 billion total for the education of Nevada’s young for the year. When after two special sessions, legislators still balked, the governor and teacher’s union went to the state supreme court. The court used a 1938 amendment (that simply required the legislature to fund education) as ‘reasoning’ that legislators could be required to pass this tax increase – because it would after all ‘fund education.’ It ordered use of a simple majority, resulting in the passage pass – negating the constitutional amendments twice passed by the voters. The Constitution must have felt as if it had been force-fed dieting pills.

Tax issues have involuntarily slimmed down the Constitution in Oregon also. Voters there have rejected a state retail sales tax nine times over several years, a very clear message. But legislators are set now, however, simply to vote it in. Elected officials, charged in the Constitution with representing their constituents’ interests, have decided their own interests are better. The Constitution may as well have been subjected to forced long-distance jogging, slimming down the Constitution in Oregon involuntarily.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich wanted an extra billion dollars for the state, and simply added a billion in business fees and tax hikes to his proposed FY 2004 budget. Because riverboat casinos the year before produced several million dollars less tax than expected, the governor simply raised the tax rate on the largest casinos to 70%. That higher rate would kick in at higher income levels. Reasoning that they would be working harder, but netting less, the casinos scaled back so as not to hit that higher tax bracket. This reasonable response was viewed by the governor as ‘cynical’ tax avoidance. He threatened to simply take them over (nationalize?), make them state-owned, and pay the current owners to run them. We can visualize the Constitution having diet pills forced down its throat.

The most portentous area of Constitutional dieting is the judiciary. Intended by the Founding Fathers to be one of three co-equal branches, it has managed somehow to elevate its status. Instead of a deliberative and fair interpreter of law, it has become in many instances a maker of law. Activist judges can force on America what liberals have not been able to bring about by ballot. This blow to our Constitution doesn’t even fit into dieting terms. It is potentially lethal to our nation as we know it.

It is said that popular culture sometimes reflects more truth than we know. That seems reflected in a recent joke from Jay Leno. “As you may have heard, the U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don’t we just give them ours? Think about it - it was written by very smart people, it’s served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we’re not using it anymore.”

We can only hope that joke doesn’t prove prophetic.

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Jan Ireland is a masters level counselor/teacher. She says that obfuscation in the media prompts her to search for the hidden.
ciscja@hotmail.com