(Note: my post title was the original name for the video until someone flagged it for content)

Probably one of the toughest obstacles to repealing the 17th amendment is the fact that the careers of senators are put in jeopardy. Many people believe that a constitutional convention by the states is the only possible way to repeal the 17th amendment, which can also be viewed as too risky due to the fact that the Constitution and Bill of Rights might be tampered with. However, there is a very easy way to have a 17th repeal pass Congress.

The 17th amendment, as ratified in 1913, concludes with:

“This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.”

Since 1913, however, the structure of political power has changed quite a bit (which the 17th amendment helped alter). Within the past decade especially, it seems that Congress is heading more and more into a parliamentary system, in which the party rather than the politician has the vote. This is very apparent in the fact that some recent bills are hundreds or even thousands of pages, as was true of the Patriot Act and Obamacare, and are not being read by the politicians despite being passed into law.

While the 17th may have guaranteed senators a safe end to their career, a repeal of the 17th will leave the political parties and lobbyists scrambling to find a new strategy for levying their agenda.

It is for this reason that a repeal of the 17th amendment in the 21st century should take effect upon the death, resignation, or election loss of a senator rather than the end of the senator’s current term. In other words, Senator X and Senator Y will remain senators so long as they continue to participate in and win popular elections.

This may be viewed as controversial, as depending on the voters’ political views it could lead to a near-infinite amount of terms guaranteed to senators. However, there are several benefits which are not obvious:

1. Increased voter turnout. As long as Senator X and Senator Y continue to win elections, the people will be happy that their “right to vote for senators” still exists so long as they continue to vote for their current senators. As a variety of elections and referendums take place on election years, people would vote for other candidates as well, and thus voter turnout would be greater.

2. Increased attention to state and local politics. State and local candidates are often ignored. If more people participate in these elections, they can learn not only about how their state’s politics work, but also how their vote affects the state’s choice in senators. Perhaps more will learn why their vote for senator isn’t “counting” and senators will lose elections faster. Increased public involvement in state politics would discourage corruption at the state level, including corruption in Senate choices after the 17th is repealed. It would also help educate the public about their state government, its importance and necessity, and its role in our federalist system.

3. Professional and academic comparisons between elected and appointed senators. The effects of a repeal could be seen as it is happening. If California is still holding senate races, while Montana is not, the two states could be compared with regard to the influence of special interests, the size of the federal government, the focus on state politics, the durations of senators in office, and anything else a think tank, college, or pollster can come up with.

4. Special interests will inevitably push for resignations. As Lord Acton stated, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. State politics are no exception, and special interests will corrupt the choice in senators as they had before the 17th. Once lobbyists have come up with ways to deal with the individual states, organizations and talking heads will slowly endorse resignations of senators once they are ready to attack.

While this proposal is radical and will leave many voters unhappy, such a transition will encourage ratification of a 17th repeal at the federal level, leaving the remainder of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, safe and intact.

“I’m tired of the right and the left,” West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller said Wednesday during a Senate hearing on retransmission consent. “There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, ‘Out. Off. End. Goodbye.’”

(via Repeal the 17th Amendment Blog)

Tonight, I left the following comment on his blog (entitled Catholic & Enjoying It, which I also just added to my blogroll):

What’s the difference between the mosque issue and, for example, allowing the construction of a Planned Parenthood facility next to an existing Catholic church? Would pro-choice protests outside the church disrupt Mass? Would the church facilities and Mass attendants be in danger of violence, or held responsible for a violent parishioner? Would Planned Parenthood demand the convenience of renting the basement of a church next door?

Something to think about.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted Thursday that a case involving WikiLeaks would likely come before the court.

She said that the WikiLeaks “incident,” in which the group posted thousands of classified Afghanistan war documents online, “and others are going to provoke legislation that’s already being discussed in Congress, and so some of it is going to come up before [the Supreme Court.]“

When I read this, I recalled WikiLeaks’ claim that the New York Times was involved:

(Click images for full size.)

The New York Times has claimed involvement in the processing of these memos:

Again, here is the statement from Justice Sotomayor:

She said that the WikiLeaks “incident,” in which the group posted thousands of classified Afghanistan war documents online, “and others are going to provoke legislation that’s already being discussed in Congress, and so some of it is going to come up before [the Supreme Court.]“

Given that the New York Times has a strong left-wing bias, could this also be a pre-engineered vehicle by the Democratic Party to support a massive regulatory change in the Internet?

Keep in mind recent lobbying efforts for a “Drudge tax” on blogs to subsidize the newspaper industry, as well as changes in “fair use” laws so as to require a “copyright license” to quote news material, and proposed propaganda efforts claiming the mainstream media is a “reputable” “public service”.

“The power to tax is the power to destroy” -McCullock v. Maryland, 1819

Paleolibertarian anarcho-capitalist blogger Lew Rockwell supports the mosque on private property rights grounds, and Catholic blogger Mark Shea compares the phenomenon to restrictions on protests against Planned Parenthood.

Islam is a highly dangerous threat to the world right now. Material is being censored and people are dying simply by pointing out the negative portions of the religion. Past Christian violence was due to poor decision making by corrupt officials, and the spread of religion through force is not commanded anywhere in the Bible. God-sanctioned violence from the Jewish people in the Old Testament is often quoted in opposition to this – these are specific battles and are not a command for all Jews or Christians to spread the religion through force. Christian leaders frequently apologize for their past acts of violence, yet Islam refuses to apologize and continues their violence, following the Quran’s command to spread theocracy. These verses still exist and regardless of whether the Muslim is peaceful or a terrorist, Allah in the Quran commands the spread of theocracy through violence.

I love my enemies, Muslim or not. I’ve known Muslims in college, had been friends with some, and they weren’t my enemies at all. But I don’t have to agree with them or support what they do.

More people need to reject the political correctness and theft of culture the Left-wing Establishment forces on people and pay attention to what is going on.

UPDATE: Here is a statement from Catholic New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, arguing for peaceful compromise, such as moving the mosque somewhere else. He cites an effort by JPII to move a convent which was near Auschwitz.

I was really unhappy to see, this afternoon, that someone had linked to my previous blog entry and written a commentary themselves, which I could only read a half a paragraph, since the user shut their blog down on the same day. No Internet Archive either. I guess it’s forever lost in history…

You Are A Mild Insomniac

You aren’t like the walking dead during the day, but you could probably use a little more sleep. Even if you don’t have trouble falling asleep at night, you tend to drag a little during the day. Try to make sleeping soundly a priority. Cut back on caffeine. Make your bed and bedroom comfortable. Just getting an extra half hour of quality sleep could make a big difference for you.

Blogthings: Are You An Insomniac?

Rather than go on a standard political rant about this issue like any other blogger would, I thought I’d apply this to each amendment in the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.

(Note that the content in this article may not apply to blogs hosted on major “community” sites such as Google and Myspace. Since they are run by major corporations, with Myspace owned by the parent company of Fox News, they may be subject to the same/similar issues as Twitter and Facebook.)

1st Amendment: No Establishment of Religion (basis for “Separation of Church and State”), Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Peaceful Assembly, Right to Petition the Government:
Blogs have empowered the people more than ever, as they expose media bias and blackouts, political scandals, and more corruption you would never find out about on TV or radio. Information about diverse religions and philosophy available on the Internet is discouraging many parents from vaccinating their children by temporarily changing their religion or claiming an exemption. Some religious issues reported by Media 1.0, such as sexual abuse issues in the Catholic Church, have been subject to further debate on blogs – for example, the role of the vow of celibacy required by most priests. Material critical of Islam, such as the movie Fitna and depictions of Muhammad, freely spreads through blogs, causing Islamic theocracies to play whack-a-mole, banning entire Web sites and threaten to execute their owners. As a means of news, blogs containing audio and video, such as embedded material uploaded onto YouTube, have enabled individuals to “broadcast”, regardless of archaic laws. Broadcast licensing was originally designed to prevent interference according to issues not present in the age of GPS, satellites, digital transmissions, and “simulcasting” (the ability to put multiple channels in a single frequency, such as with Digital TV and HD Radio). However, they eventually became a means of media control. It took many media blackouts for obscure anti-establishment politician Ron Paul to gain media exposure in 2008, and in the 2004 Democratic primaries an antitrust-minded man named Howard Dean was mocked out of the race over a pep rally. Many grassroots campaigns, spread via blogs, have been highly successful. The Internet has made it easy to send e-mails and faxes to Congressmen and -women, as well as make laws and transcripts available for full viewing.
What gives blogs the advantage with all of this over Twitter or Facebook is the fact that if you own or lease the hardware running your site, you have much more freedom, since the less contracts there are, and the more privacy rights you have (Facebook is notorious for a mysterious “selling out” on the importance of privacy rights some time ago), the freer you are.

2nd Amendment: Right to Bear Arms:
In a world of liberal and neo”conservative” media, true conservatives and libertarians have grown due to blogs. Efforts such as the “Ron Paul Revolution” presidential campaign of 2008, the successor group Campaign for Liberty, and Tea Party protests owe the Internet their success. In opposition to these efforts, bog-standard left-wing charges of “violent racists” and “angry white men” fly at innocent Republicans who now have a new opportunity to speak their mind. And unlike Twitter and Facebook, which respond to any one complaint by banning the user or material immediately, so-called “hate speech” and “harassment” accusations by the left-wing establishment can be resolved more easily and fairly with a hosting provider, even if similar bans are in their contracts.

3rd Amendment: No Quartering of Soldiers:
Many blogs, such as the anarcho-capitalist LewRockwell.com and Justin Raimondo’s Antiwar.com, frequently criticize wars, foreign policy measures, anti-terrorism laws, and the actions of the US military (in fact, LRC is banned from offices of US intelligence agencies). No longer are complaints about the military or government limited to our minds or homes – while none of us, whether criminal or peaceful, are anonymous to authorities in any way, blog pseudonyms enable us to publish all kinds of crazy ideological arguments without our families and friends even knowing. Again, Facebook and Twitter will shut anything “hate speech” down immediately.

4th Amendment: Search & Seizure, Warrants, Right to Privacy:
The establishment has grown very successful in defeating the protections of this amendment. Laws such as the Patriot Act have eroded this right, and social networks and search engines have become goldmines for both private industry and government agencies. Facebook and Twitter are no exception – those sites store backups of your actions even if you delete your account. Web hosts have their own privacy policies and law enforcement measures which may be much less invasive. Other laws, such as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, have granted these same broad powers to copyright holders, though in some cases they are used for purpose of censorship or forming trust-like “holding” organizations rather than copyright infringement.
And while Media 1.0 will censor or twist anything that reflects badly upon its own industry (or any other industry for that matter), and Facebook has “mysteriously” reversed its stance on privacy rights recently, blogs such as Slashdot have risen to fill in the blanks.

5th Amendment: No Double Jeopardy, No Self-Incrimination, Right to Life, Liberty, and Property, Eminent Domain:
6th Amendment: Right to a Speedy Trial, Nature of Trials:
7th Amendment: Right to Trial By Jury:
Acts which threaten the establishment have led to intelligence agencies and copyright holders to engage in dealmaking which is slowly trending towards entire leasing of your machine. Blogs have been reporting these efforts by Microsoft, Apple, the MAFIAA, and others, as well as reporting hacker attacks on remotely-stored personal data, which is sometimes marketed as “cloud computing”. After eminent domain laws were extremely loosened to allow seizure of property by Wal-Mart, bloggers not only reported the story, but debated the consequences. Trial by jury is being threatened through the expansion of forced arbitration, mandated by a federal law irreversible by states, including to Web sites about cartoon characters, rapists, neglectful murdering nursing homes, and consumer electronics purchases, but people are getting together and fighting the law, and some arbitration companies have left consumer dispute markets. The banking industry’s role in the current recession, reported by bloggers with an anti-establishment bias, has helped with this issue as well.

8th Amendment: No Cruel or Unusual Punishment:
Information regarding foreign wars have been reported by bloggers, with Media 1.0 dishonesty even being videotaped. Torture and other events at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo would be easy to hide if blogs didn’t exist, and there would be less questioning the claims made by the President about national security and foreign dictators. The use of pseudonyms have encouraged people to discuss and debate the Israeli lobby without fear of being publicly labeled an anti-Semite, even if they secretly are one.

9th Amendment: Rights Not Limited to Constitution:
As rights such as copyright protection have been broadly expanded in length and scope, bloggers have been making use of Creative Commons licenses to waive such rights for the benefit of themselves and others. This even includes musicians who rely on a cult following and touring, such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, who have left major labels and still kept their fans. Some have gone even further and released material entirely into the public domain, as controversial creationist figure Kent Hovind once did. I myself have released much of this blog’s content into the public domain.

10th Amendment: States’ Rights, Other Rights Belong to States & People:
Due to dissatisfaction with the establishment, fueled by blogs and the Tea Party movement, many libertarians have started a “Tenther” movement, proposing that the US become a confederacy where states have nullification rights over an ever-expanding federal government. Many want to repeal other Constitutional amendments associated with infringing on states’ rights, including parts of the 14th (birthright citizenship, bill of rights applies to states), the 16th (direct federal income tax), and the 17th (senate popularly elected like the house is, something I want to see repealed). Twitter and Facebook, once again, will shut down anything after somebody points the race card.

27th Amendment: Limiting Congressional Pay:
(part of original Bill of Rights, but not ratified until 1992)
Bloggers have been able to monitor Congress like never before, including not only laws and transcripts in their entirety, but also exposing financial and sexual scandals, ties to various lobbies, and other forms of corruption Media 1.0 would never report, and would be extremely difficult to spread via Twitter.