Those are good ideas. Happy Holiday Weekend!

Republicans have successfully hindered and weakened the right to vote across America. We need to stop and reverse that immediately.

nt

Everything else depends on this.

Welcome queentonic!

2/3 of both houses of congress deem a change is necessary and propose amendments, or on the application of the legislatures of 2/3 of the states to call for a convention for proposing amendments.

Then the amendment needs to be ratified by the legislatures of 3/4 of the states or by conventions in 3/4 thereof , as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by congress.

Per the Article 5 of the constitution.

I agree they are all great ideas.

a bunch of new rules but if it's ours here are the other rules'

If Congress passes a bill and the president fails to either sign or veto it, then it automatically becomes law.

Likewise, if the Senate fails to vote on a nomination within a reasonable amount of time (3 months should be fine), then the person is automatically confirmed.

and he'd be deemed automatically confirmed.

Not such a great idea, imo.

is automatically rejected.

then simply by refusing to schedule a vote, the majority party could "reject" the nomination put forward by the president.

A rule saying that no vote within a certain time frame equals rejection allows the party that controls the Senate to frustrate a nomination by inaction. A rule saying that no vote within a certain time frame equals confirmation allows the party that controls the Senate to obtain the confirmation of a nominee put forward by a President from their own party without requiring anyone to go on the record.

Neither rule really works.

but do you know what is involved in amending, changing or adding to the Constitution?

We, as a nation, are so polarized that it would be near to impossible to add to our Constitution.

is no easy task. It takes a lot more than a simple majority. Not to be a negative nancy, but dont get your hopes up.

1. Bring back the Fairness Doctrine (Fox Ruse IS propaganda)
2. Increase the number of justices on the SCOTUS
3. Get rid of the Electoral College

*I am not a Poli Sci major and do not know if these can be done but I have read several times during the past 2 years that these are items that pundits have said should be changed.

don't you?

Thanks!

Kinda figured that's what you meant.

Setting aside that pesky 1st Amendment, the only reason that it was legal was because it was a regulation on renewing broadcast licenses. Fox, as a cable channel, is not subject to FCC regulation.

I see no benefit of corporate personhood. If a corporation breaks the law now they are fined and nobody goes to jail. It's time that people are jailed for corporate misdeeds.

Our legal system only allows people to be held to account. If we got rid of corporate personhood, you couldn't sue a corporation. (And don't say "well, you can't sue one now." You can, and if you have enough money, or enough friends with money, to outlast their lawyers you might actually prevail. Without corporate personhood, you couldn't sue one at all.)

Corporate personhood also comes in real handy if it's your corporation and you're being unjustly sued. No corporate personhood means no corporate veil which also means a patent troll or a copyright troll could not only take your company's money, they could clean out your personal bank account and steal your house.

The good corporate personhood does vastly exceeds the evil it brings.

that corporations can own property, enter into contracts, and be sued, as jmowreader says. They could not function without those rights. But do corporate persons share all rights of natural persons or of citizens? The Republican apparatchiki on the Supreme Court misrepresented the constitution to claim that it does. (I say misrepresented not misconstrued as I think they knew what they were doing.) A constitutional amendment, or, probably, even a federal statute could define corporate personhood in a more limited way, since, after all, a corporation (unlike a natural person) is a creature of the state.

1. Agree.

2. Disagree. A judge close to the 20 year limit will cause massive chaos in a election. In other words, politicizing the judicial position instead of focusing on issues. Even with life time appointments, the politics is bad.

3. Agree....but that gets tricky. There are massive economic consequences and adjustments to be made.

4. Agree..but what happens when the tax code changes and they are no longer required to report under the amendment? Best to leave this to the states who can pass laws more readily than the Federal Government.

5. Bad idea. Just about every election will be called into doubt by the losing party. It will make things worse, not better. We have only two methods of removing the president....and are slow moving. Some kind of improvement or third option sounds better.

They're both part of the Unitary Executive theory than Bush/Cheney were pushing.

the overwhelming majority go to ordinary people, often those convicted of minor drug offenses. Getting rid of that power would be a huge mistake.

Here's a list of the pardons granted by Obama:https://www.justice.gov/pardon/obama-pardons

Agree with all of these queentonic. It won't be easy, but I think with some effort and backing by the populace it can be done.

Welcome to DU!

The House gets four years, and the election is the same year as the presidential election.

The Senate gets eight years, elections are the same year as the presidential election.

States will be encouraged to do likewise.

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We need a mechanism for an outside body to impeach a legislator. The Framers of the Constitution weren't perfect; one of the things they fucked up worst was not creating any way for someone besides Congress to get rid of a corrupt member. Perhaps the governors of five states could request a legislator be impeached, and a board of 100 members, one Democrat and one Republican from each state, meets in Washington to hear the evidence and decide. Conviction requires 67 votes.

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Add a requirement to the list of requirements for president that a candidate must have been held an elected office within five years of the election, and the office has to be a governorship or a US Congress seat in either house. Cabinet secretaries must get elected to office before they are allowed to run for president.

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A president's salary is set by Congress before the start of the president's term. Unless the president is receiving a military pension, he or she may not receive one dollar more than the statutorily-set presidential salary from the government.

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The size of the House of Representatives will no longer be fixed at 435 seats. Instead, a state will receive one seat per each whole number multiple of the population of the smallest state. (So, if Wyoming has 500k residents, Idaho has 1.65 million and New York has 20 million, Wyoming gets one seat, Idaho gets three (1650k/500k = a little over 3) and New York gets 40. E-conferencing can be used to reduce the size of the hall needed to hold them all.

I would add the removal of provisions in the 13 amendment that allow slavery to exist.