Constitutional Amendment Idea: The Congress Is Not Beyond The Law Amendment

Lexington Green has some ideas on a new Contract with America and suggests a constitutional amendment:

Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and Congress shall make no law that applies to either Senators or Representatives or both that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States. Any law enacted in violation of this Amendment shall be void and of no force and effect at any time.

I would alter it slightly to:

Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives including their staffs; and Congress shall make no law that applies to either Senators or Representatives including their staffs or both that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States. Any law enacted in violation of this Amendment shall be void and of no force and effect at any time.

…

While writing this, I realized I had already noted something like this before…with the same Tagline even:

Not Above the Law Amendment

What

No officer of the government of the United States, or of any of the various States shall be held immune from any generally applicable law. Any law written so as to be generally applicable except to select officers of the Federal or State governments shall be null and void.

Source: Creative Destruction Blog

Update: Here is the original Source

Capturing My Thoughts: Big Tent National Political Parties and Federalism

In response to something CGW wrote on a TDAXP post:

Is “big tent” now an impossibility for any politcal party in America; and, if so, what will be the likely results?

I had this thought:

I am thinking a “Big Tent” national party works better we not so many things are treated as centralized national issues needing a top down/one-sized fits all solutions.

The reverse to this is that a system of strong Federalism (many issues left to the States and locals and citizens themselves) makes for a better environment for national Big Tent parties since much the differences in views would not matter much policy-wise.

So, if somebody thinks Big Tent parties make for a better national government, then they should support Federalism.

I support Federalism.

I would be completely okay with a Third Party to replace either the Dems or Repubs that focused on: Strong Federalism, Anti-Corruption, and Fiscal Responsibility – a Clean-up-the-System” Party.

Note I left out a particular National Security PoV as one of the big three of the party. Party members could call themselves “broomies”.

More to come…

Interesting obituary: “Luckily, a good Polish man gave my father a rifle and 150 bullets”…

…in today’s Milwaukee Journal:

By 1941, however, the Nazis had taken away most of the town’s Jewish men.

“Luckily, a good Polish man gave my father a rifle and 150 bullets,” Jack said. “My father started the nucleus of a mostly Jewish fighting group – the majority were Russian Jews – with other Polish and Ukrainian and Russian fighters.”

On Sept. 23, 1942, the Nazis and police began rounding up all the remaining Jewish residents of the town.

“They took us out, put us in the middle of a road and counted everyone,” she later recalled in a news article. She was then a 32-year-old mother, holding the hands of her daughters, ages 4 and 2.

The situation was still fluid. She tried to get people to do something, anything, saying they should burn the town and run for the forests. People were too afraid to try.

“So she told her mother and sisters and daughters, ‘Let me try to find a place for us to hide,’ ” Jack said.

A policeman stopped her as she left the area. “Why waste a bullet on me now?” she argued. “You’re going to kill us all tomorrow.”

He let her leave.

She found a barn and tried to go back for her family, but by then there were too many guards. Even if she managed to get back to her family, there was no way they could escape together.

“She went back to the barn,” her son said. “And the next morning she heard the shots.”

Twenty-five members of her family and her husband’s family were killed.

“Three-hundred-eighty Jews were rounded up and taken to the edge of town, shot and buried in a mass grave,” said daughter Bella Smith.

Nazis began searching the countryside, including the barn where she was hiding. She was grazed by a bayonet as a Nazi stabbed the hay pile. That night, she crawled into the forest, alone for months.

“She didn’t know my father was alive,” her daughter said. “He didn’t know she was alive. He heard there may have been survivors and found her. She was down to 80 pounds and he carried her back to the partisan unit.”

The partisan group, which became known as the Kruk-Max Otryad, grew to include 150 fighters and more than 250 civilians in a family camp, the third-largest such group in Europe, Jack said.

“Mom was the nurse and a cook with the fighter group,” Jack said. “Theirs is like the story of the movie, ‘Defiance,’ about the Bielski Otryad.”

After liberation by the Russians in 1944, they lived at the Bindermichel displaced persons camp near Linz, Austria. There they were a rare married couple who survived the war, becoming surrogate parents to young people who had lost their own.

“They would walk these girls down the aisle when they married,” Jack said.

His father’s brother, in the U.S. since the 1920s, heard they were alive. He sent $100, enough for steerage tickets for the couple and son Jack. They first lived in Chicago, but soon settled in Milwaukee in 1946.

This why I watch “Red Eye”

My short plan for the War in Afghanistan:

Here’s my short plan (started here) for the War in Afghanistan (as opposed to Obama’s Surge and run plan):

0) Bring up the combat force Level
1) Employ 3-D Maneuver to kick the Ass of enemy formations and strongholds that dare to exist
2) Deep Predator strikes based on Sigint and Humint
3) Full Spectrum Influence Warfare to make Taliban/Al-Qada appear as: silly, weak, ridiculous, evil, non-Islamic, tools of the Iranians, boy-lovers, goat-lovers, tools of the Chinese, of high mortality, hypocritical
4) SysAdmin work to clean up the place and train the Afgani Army and Police
5) Influence Warfare to keep the USA/West domestic opposition at bay: Perhaps lots of photos, videos, and audio of Taliban/Al-Qada attrocities and positive first person Afghan accounts
6) Repeat steps 1 through 5 until victory

Clearing the Antilibrary

These are things I have been reading but really haven’t mentioned.

The Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny
This was a great history book on the personalities and politics (stories both big and small) around the Berlin Airlift. I didn’t know much about this incident other then a mental paragraph or so filed away. This is a book about unlikely heroes behind the scenes, diplomacy, public diplomacy, the cold war and politics. It was both fun and enlightening. I highly recommend it. It is a keeper.

The Coldest Winter by  David Halberstam
This was an excellent one-volume political and military history of the Korean War

Shadow of the Sword by  Jeremiah Workman with John Bruning
This a good memoir of heroism and PTSD from the Iraq war.

The Edge of Disaster by Stephen Flynn
This is a Resiliency-as-national-goal public policy book. It is a slim quick read with some interesting suggestions.

“I am in a funk right now about the direction America is going”

So I comment here at TDAXP

Shudder.

“You only need three years of 10% inflation to cut our debt to Communist China in half…”

That would also devalue my savings. Once again punishing those Americans who did right actions (lived beneath their means) while benefiting those who lived above their means. I am sure the BigBiz/BigGov elites (the new Vanguard) will come out okay.

I am in a funk right now about the direction America is going.

Watching V (spoilers)

Spoilers to follow…

Badger Pride: On Wisconsin (The Hip-Hop remix)

Influence Warfare (using ridicule) Example: “How to Make a Butt Bomb: Al Qaeda Training Video”

(from The People’s Cube h/t PoliticalWarfare.org)

I hope there is an version of this being made into Arabic/Farsi/Etc and being plastered to Mideast video sites.

Music Break – The Violent Femmes cover Gnals Barkley’s Crazy!

Here is the Violent Femmes Version:

Here is the original:

Here is Gnals Barkley covering the Femmes:

RIP Jim Carroll

I just read Jim Carroll died on 9/11/2009.

RIP punk poet – this is for you my brother:

Digging Glee

I am really liking the new TV show Glee. The first episode blew me away.

The blog TV Squad had the idea to suggest 5 songs you’d like to see them cover. Well here are my choices (the first 5 that came to mind anyways):

- Rick Springfield’s Jesse’s Girl
- Bee Gee’s Lonely Days
- I will Survive (more Cake then Gloria Gaynor)
- Lily Allen’s Smile
- Bruce Cockburn’s Wondering Where the Lions Are

(old found draft post)CyberWar – Ref Links

Apr 26, 2009 @ 12:05

I will return to the topic of CyberWar sometime in the near future.

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(old found draft post)Historical 5GW Example: The Anti-Nixon 5GW-ish Coup

Dec 31, 2008 @ 15:53

I should still write this up more fully, if I have time to get into it. The revelation was pretty shocking and way under-reported.

–

http://amicablecollisions.blogspot.com/2008/12/all-fbis-men.html

http://committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/deep-throats-coup-detat/

http://committeeofpublicsafety.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/the-deep-throat-dilemma/

http://purpleslog.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/the-joint-chiefs-of-staff-using-the-stenographer-as-their-agent-actively-spied-on-the-civilian-command-during-the-vietnam-war/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Mark_Felt

(old found draft post) Energy News

Dec 16, 2008 @ 8:35

This was just going to an energy links roundup.

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Wireless Power Transmission test have been successful. Yeah for Tesla!

Suck it Al Gore: “Greenhouse Gas Comes from Solar Panels“

“Bjorn Lomborg Says Cool It!: Getting our priorities right on climate change and the world’s top problems“

West Allis (Milwaukee news): “Mini wind turbine proposal blows into council chambers”

“Another potential big deal is the thorium breeder reactor.”

(old found draft post)Pro-Entrepreneurial Public Policy Suggestions

Dec 24, 2008 @ 16:29

I should come back to gathering these.

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Dump Sox

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081222/1647513199.shtml

Tort Refrom

IP reform

Radical transparency
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081113/0321092822.shtml

OpenAuction
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080820/0110372037.shtml

(old found draft post) Ralph Peters: “the complexity of counterterror operations comes down to three essential requirements”

Dec 4, 2008 @ 10:17

I am not sure why I didn’t post it. I guess I didn’t feel like going to how to do a counter-terror/counter-4GW 5GW. I should come back to this idea.

–

In the NY Post:

All the complexity of counterterror operations comes down to three essential requirements: Superb intelligence, ruthless determination and tremendous patience.

Intelligence helps you find the enemies you need to kill; determination means you kill them – and patience means accepting that even a successful fight will take decades, if not generations.

Sounds right to me.

So, do we have “Superb intelligence”. I have no idea. It is at least “good” I would venture (and expect given the budget size).

Do we have “ruthless determination”? I don’t think – at least much of the political class doesn’t (or most the US  population).

Lastly, Does the US have “tremendous patience”. I would say no, for sure no way. The US did not have the patience in the Cold War. It took a 5GW to set much of the US cold war response on automatic.

I guess we need a Long War 5GW.

(old found draft post) Fixing Milwaukee Notes – Notes from 9/7 Sunday Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Sep 11, 2008 @ 16:08

My “Fixing Milwaukee” post are on hiatus. The problem is real big, I am a bit discouraged at the moment. I am not sure of the next steps.

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Reference Definition: Institutions

Definitions Matter. For future reference, I will use the definition for “Institutions”

“Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure human interaction. They are made up of formal constraints (rules, laws, constitutions), informal constraints (norms of behavior, conventions, and self imposed codes of conduct), and their enforcement characteristics.” [Ref: Douglass C. North Nobel Lecture]

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1993/north-lecture.html ]

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1993/north-lecture.html

Fixing Milwaukee Notes – Problem/Solutions Dimensions

• Institutions
• Culture
• Attitudes
• leadership
• incentives
• focus
• public relations
• security
• human capital
• demographics
• natural resources
• business

entrepreneurship
wealth and capital
regulatory laws, zoning
governmentsal relations
eva
infrastructure
swot
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4939
metrics

(old found draft post) Hands off my 401k

Oct 25, 2008 @ 8:35

This must have been inspired by some Obama advisers who wanted to get rid of 401ks. Their plan was to force the same contributions and give Americans something like a 2% return off it. This would have effectively decreased the wealth of Americans as more money would need to be saved for retirement (out side of the government plan) and this savings would have no tax favoured status. I haven’t heard anything about this recently though, so that is good news.

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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/23/democrats-to-kill-401ks-for-privatized-social-security/

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/23/pethokoukis-on-401k-demolition-socialism/

(old found draft post) biz ideas X 2

From Sep 26, 2008 @ 14:29

–

What was I thinking?

asisted Living Robotics
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/09/a_billion_elders_by_2050in_chi.html

bio-discovery driven engineering
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/09/another_county_heard_from_on_a.html

Robot News (links – no post)

I was going to write a post on this along time ago. Instead, I just follow this blog – robots.net . So, I am dumping these links. I may write on robotics now and then.

Lots of old draft posts

I found quite few old post of mine in “draft mode”. I am going to post them to also clear my mind. I am going to do a bunch of link dumps as well.

You tell him, Jack!

9/11

I will just note my prior posts on  9/10/2001 and 9/11/2001.

Maybe I will write more in a few days.