HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster)
Subject: Re: Who's weakening the constitution?
Organization: StorageTek SW Engineering
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 17:00:32 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.001302.3103@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
 
>In <168BD8A10.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com> MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Dec13.070641.9436@anasazi.com>
>>karl@anasazi.com (Karl Dussik) writes:
>>>                  What about requiring the President to spend every penny
>>>appropriated - that didn't come about until the Nixon administration as I
>>>recall.
>>>
>>>Karl Dussik
>>>--
>>The President is responsible for "faithfully executing the laws".  If
>>the law specifies a certain amount of money be spent for a certain
>>purpose, then his oath of office requires him to spend that much.  If
>>he does not want to spend that much, his only recourse is to veto the
>>bill.  If Congress overrides his veto, then he is again required to
>>spend the money.
>
>Hmmmm.  I thought there were provisions in the law for sequestration
>of funds.  I'm not sure what conditions had to be met before the
>President was permitted to do this, though.
>--
>Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
 
If the law has such a provision, then it is permissible.  Congress has
to have given the President permission to sequester the funds, or in
some manner made the spending discretionary.
 
However, if Congress passes a bill that establishes an agency, and
funds it at a certain level, the President cannot just decide the
agency is unnecessary and simply eliminate it by refusing to spend the
funds.  If he disagrees, he must veto the funding and take his chances
on an override.  Otherwise, he is violating his oath of office.
 
Jim McMaster
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics
From: MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster)
Subject: Re: Who's weakening the constitution?
Organization: StorageTek SW Engineering
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 16:39:15 GMT

In article <Bz510p.3qn@newsserver.technet.sg>
ipser@solomon.technet.sg (Ed Ipser) writes:
 
>In article <1992Dec12.043001.10165@unixland.natick.ma.us> cramer@unixland.natick.ma.us (Bill Cramer) writes:
>>MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:
>>: The Constitution says I have a right to run for Congress if I am 25
>>: years old and a citizen.  Should I lose that right just because I
>>: happen to live in a state with term limits?  The 14th Amendment might
>>: even come into play here.  Again, if we want term limits (a very bad
>>: idea in my opinion), I think they need to be imposed via the
>>: amendment process.
>
>Leaving aside the whole discussion of  merit, and focusing entirely upon
>constitutionality, the question should be posed as follows:
>
>I'm over 25, a citizen, etc. Do I have the right to have my name on the
>ballot? The answer is clearly no. First, I have to pass many criteria
>set by the state including either being nominated by a government-approved
>political party or gathering n-thousand signatures.
>
>Note well: term limits, as defined by the recent constitutional amendments,
>do no prohibit anyone from running for office. They simply demote anyone
>who has held office for n-terms to the signature gathering process. They
>are no longer automatically on the ballot just because they are nominated by
>a government-approved political party. That's it!
>
>Term limits, defined in this way, are clearly constitutional. To argue
>otherwise, you would have to say, in effect, that Demopublicans and
>Republicrats have a right to appear on the ballot that an arbitrary man
>on the street does not.
>
>Is that really what you want to argue?
>
This started as an argument avout "term limits", i.e., preventing
people from running for more than a limited number of terms.  I posted
arguments that establishing such limits by state legislation is
unconstitutional in my opinion.
 
Then someone said "in California, we don't limit terms, we just
prvevent some people from appearing on the ballot.  They have to run as
a write-in".  I argued this may violate the equal protection clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment.
 
Now someone says term limits just mean someone has to gather extra
signatures, and cannot appear simply by party nomination.
 
I am tired of arguing against a constantly shifting definition of term
limits.  Could someone in each state that has passed term limits post
the text of the laws as they affect Congressional representatives and
Senators?  That way, we can all at least argue the same issue.
 
Jim McMaster
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics,misc.legal
From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: Who's weakening the constitution?
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 00:13:02 GMT

In <168BD8A10.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com> MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:

>In article <1992Dec13.070641.9436@anasazi.com>
>karl@anasazi.com (Karl Dussik) writes:
>>                  What about requiring the President to spend every penny
>>appropriated - that didn't come about until the Nixon administration as I
>>recall.
>>
>>Karl Dussik
>>--
>The President is responsible for "faithfully executing the laws".  If
>the law specifies a certain amount of money be spent for a certain
>purpose, then his oath of office requires him to spend that much.  If
>he does not want to spend that much, his only recourse is to veto the
>bill.  If Congress overrides his veto, then he is again required to
>spend the money.

Hmmmm.  I thought there were provisions in the law for sequestration
of funds.  I'm not sure what conditions had to be met before the
President was permitted to do this, though.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics,misc.legal
From: ataylor@nmsu.edu (Nosy)
Subject: Re: Who's weakening the constitution?
Organization: NMSU Computer Science
	<ByL0DL.10zB@austin.ibm.com>
	<1992Dec3.011755.25925@midway.uchicago.edu>
	<1992Dec13.070641.9436@anasazi.com>
	<168BD8A10.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com>
	<1992Dec15.001302.3103@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:03:33 GMT

<In article <1992Dec15.001302.3103@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
<   In <168BD8A10.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com> MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:<

<   >In article <1992Dec13.070641.9436@anasazi.com>
<   >karl@anasazi.com (Karl Dussik) writes:
<   >>                  What about requiring the President to spend every penny
<   >>appropriated - that didn't come about until the Nixon administration as I
<   >>recall.
<   >>
<   >>Karl Dussik
<   >>--
<   >The President is responsible for "faithfully executing the laws".  If
<   >the law specifies a certain amount of money be spent for a certain
,   >purpose, then his oath of office requires him to spend that much.  If
<   >he does not want to spend that much, his only recourse is to veto the
<   >bill.  If Congress overrides his veto, then he is again required to
<   >spend the money.

<   Hmmmm.  I thought there were provisions in the law for sequestration
<   of funds. 

	Gutted by the "Watergate Congress" in 1974, at the same
	time as the budge process in the House was "improved".

	Note that since 1974, the House has spent $1.50 for
	every $1.00 of tax receipts.

< I'm not sure what conditions had to be met before the
<   President was permitted to do this, though.

	A change in the law, that's what.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,or.politics,misc.headlines
From: wandac@sequent.com (Wanda Chauncy)
Subject: 3rd Party Certified in Oregon
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.
Distribution: or
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 92 00:46:32 GMT

This information is being posted for those who did not see the
official news release dated December 3, 1992.  Anyone interested in
finding out more about the IIPO can contact Peggy Pearce at 636-9291
or Scott Keller at 222-8248 (pager).  Public meetings are held weekly
in hopes of defining a statement of principles and creating processes
in support of this new party.  Your input is welcome!

From: Phil Keisling, Office of the Secretary of State

KEISLING CERTIFIES GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS:
INDEPENDENT INITIATIVE PARTY QUALIFIES AS
MAJOR POLITICAL PARTY

SALEM--Secretary of State Phil Keisling today certified the final
1992 general election results.

        Because the electors for Ross Perot polled 24.4 percent of
the votes cast for president in Oregon, the Independent Initiative
Party which qualified Perot for the Oregon ballot is now a major
political party in Oregon.  In order to achieve major political party
status, party candidates for presidential electors must poll at least
20 percent of the total votes cast for president.  Qualifying as a
major political party allows the Independent Initiative Party to
participate in the primary election process.
        "To the best of our knowledge, the last time Oregon had more
than two major political parties was in 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt ran
as a Progressive Party presidential candidate," said Elections
Division Director Colleen Sealock.  The other major political parties
in Oregon are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

                                -END-
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics,misc.legal
From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Subject: Judicial Review (again)
Followup-To: misc.legal
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 18:41:06 GMT

>In article <1992Dec5.230225.1426@mksol.dseg.ti.com> mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>>Personally, I'd like to see a repeal of Marbury V. Madison

You know, this got me thinking.  The concept of judicial review is
controversial enough (though it was acknowledged as necessary by the
writers of the Constitution, who seemed to think that there was so
little controversy over the issue that they saw no reason to explicitly
put it into the Constitution -- all of the debates at the Convention
take judicial review as a given, and a proposal to give the Supreme
Court veto power was turned down partially because judicial review
was deemed sufficient enough power to provide checks and balances*), but
the Supreme Court decisions that we've seen criticized on the net
most recently -- Roe v Wade, Gideon v Wainwright, Texas v Johnson,
and even Bowers v Hardwick -- none of these decisions require _Marbury_
to reach their result.  All of them rely on the concept of the judicial
branch being able to overturn unConstitutional state law, and this concept 
*is* fairly clearly delineated in the Constitution, and this ability
was established in Martin v Hunter's Lessee, which I haven't seen anyone
on the net complain about. 

Is it even the case that the Supreme Court has a monopoly on Constitutional
interpretation?  Andrew Jackson vetoed legislation that he considered
unConstitutional (even though the Court had previously held similar
legislation unConstiutional).  Similarly, Congress passed a law invalidating
a New York voting requirement that the Court had upheld as not
unConstiutional; the Court upheld the Congressional statute in Katzenbach
v Morgan.

FN*: Jefferson seems to have felt otherwise in at least one letter written in
1804.  But see Bickel, The Least Dangerous Branch at 15-16.
-- 
ted frank                     | thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu 
standard disclaimers          | void where prohibited
the university of chicago law school, chicago, illinois 60637
Xref: sparky alt.politics.elections:24557 talk.politics.misc:63886
From: mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Who's weakening the constitution?
Date: 11 Dec 92 21:30:30 GMT
Organization: NCR Engineering and Manufacturing Atlanta -- Atlanta, GA

In <168B98CF3.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com> MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:

|In article <12063@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM>
|mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson) writes:
| 
|>If this were true what would happen to other ballot access laws that the
|>states have passed, such as getting petitions signed, restricting felons,
|>requiring that someone live in the district that they want to represent.
|>
|>I believe that the majority of term limit laws that were recently passed
|>were not true term limits as most people understand that term, but were
|>instead ballot access laws.  They state that after X terms, the incumbent
|>will have to run as a right in candidate.
|>
|>--
|>Mark.Wilson@AtlantaGA.NCR.com
| 
|States have the right to determine the time, place and manner of
|elections, and to establish reasonable requirements for getting on the
|ballot.  Requiring candidates to live in a district seems reasonable,
|as does requiring a person to demonstrate some reasonable chance of
|being elected via signatures.
| 
|Right now, any citizen can get a place on the ballot by following the
|rules.  The rules make it difficult, but not impossible.  Your "ballot
|access laws" create a new class of citizens other than felons who
|cannot get a place on the ballot by following any procedure whatsoever.
|They are effectively being denied an equal chance to be elected to an
|office.
| 
|Term limits are, in and of themselves, a bad idea.  If you don't like
|an elected official, work to defeat him/her.  If you can't do that,
|tough luck.  If you really want to enact term limits, you *might* have
|hit on a Constitutional method of doing so.  The courts will rule on
|that in a few years, and I think the laws will be thrown out.  If you
|want to impose term limits, a Constitutional amendment is the sure way
|to do it, and in my opinion, the right way.  Certainly, it is harder to
|do....it is supposed to be.

Actually there is a very simple way to get your name back on the ballot.
Either wait one term and then run again, or run for a different office.

I disagree with you about term limits, I view them as the first step in
regaining control of government.

-- 
Mob rule doesn't become any prettier, just because the mob start to call itself
a government.
It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money.
Mark.Wilson@AtlantaGA.NCR.com
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics
From: sbooth@lonestar.utsa.edu (Simon E. Booth)
Subject: Re: Walking down to the student center last night
Keywords: significant words from a document used as an index to content
Organization: University of Texas at San Antonio
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 23:25:48 GMT


This thread is still going?  I first saw this one back in September.

Simon

Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,tx.politics,talk.politics.misc
From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Subject: Re: The collapse of communism and the role of the U.S.
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc
Distribution: tx
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 15:05:46 GMT

In <1992Dec14.181402.16951@montagar.com> davidc@montagar.com (David L. Cathey) writes:

>In article <1992Dec10.144857.22957@mksol.dseg.ti.com>, mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>> In <1992Dec7.233404.27033@Princeton.EDU> pswanson@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Paul Swanson) writes:
>>>It greatly overstrained the economic resources of both countries,
>>>leaving both, by the end of the 1980's, confronted with heavy financial,
>>>social and, in the case of the Russians, political problems that neither
>>>had anticipated and for which neither was fully prepared.
>> 
>> Another misstatement.  Just what is the 'cost' supposed to have been
>> to us that was so disastrous?  It is those "heavy financial, social,
>> and political problems" that pushed the Soviet tightrope walker off
>> the wire.

>	Well, looking at a $4T debt could be disastrous.  You analogy of the
>tight-rope walker in incomplete.  We also are on a tight-rope, since we do
>not live in a bubble unaffected by the (un)USSR.  We just did a better job
>of balancing, but are not means off the wire, yet.

And why do you want to attribute that debt to only one component of
spending?  If you add up spending, I think you'll find that
entitlements are bigger than Defense, both in the short and long term.
So why not blame the debt on entitlements?

>	That's not to say it was not required, since the USSR did believe
>that it could take over the world (presumably without firing a shot?)  However,
>it would have been nicer to feed a few people instead...

Well, I think it's pretty nice that we're all here and can disagree
with each other without having the KGB show up at the door.  I'd
rather have that than feed a few people who I don't even know.  Of
course, doing both would be 'nice', too.  

>> We would all be better off if the change had been more gradual and the
>> Soviet Union still held sway over Eastern Europe?  I suspect a lot of
>> Eastern Europeans would disagree with you on that one.

>	Actually, we should have probably turned Patton loose, and avoided the
>whole mess...  It would have cost much less in the long run.  But that's
>hindsight.

We wouldn't have even had to turn Patton loose.  The Germans offered
to surrender to us if we would arm them and let them fight the
Russians.  Their reasoning was, "You're going to have to do it sooner
or later, anyway, so why not let us do it for you?"

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc
From: mgoldbrg@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mark Goldberg)
Subject: Re: Who's weakening the constitution?
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 06:42:43 GMT

In article <168B98CF3.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com> MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:
>In article <12063@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM>
>mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson) writes:
> 
>>In <168B7B22B.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com> MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:
>>
>>|The constitution lays out qualifications for Senators and
>>|Representatives.  It makes no provision for the states' adding
>>|additional qualifications on top of those.  It does not prohibit it,
>>|either, so this would have to be decided by the courts.  I believe the
>>|laws would be declared invalid, but who can tell?
>>

Does anyone besides me think this topic has been slightly worn out?  Call me
crazy, but it gets a little tiresome sorting through the same argument 15
times a day for weeks when nothing new or constructive has been added.

mark
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian
From: palmer@icat.larc.nasa.gov (Michael T. Palmer)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Argument for broadening the veto power
Date: 15 Dec 92 21:17:05 GMT
Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA  USA
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: icat.larc.nasa.gov

mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:

>My preferred solution would be to create a separate office, much like the
>Fed, whose whole purpose would be to line-item veto pork before the
>president exercised his option to sign or veto.  It likely would require a
>constitutional ammendment.  Removing the line-item veto from the political
>arena (even if only a small distance, as in the Fed) could lead to a
>substantial reduction in pork, as opposed to whatever pork the president
>insisted upon.

Unfortunately for your solution, one person's pork is another person's
cyclotron, interstate bypass, agricultural research study, etc.  Everything
the government does has to be done SOMEwhere, even the GOOD things (please
just assume for the sake of argument that it is *possible* that it may
accidentally do something good).

Ammendment proposals (for bills, not the constitution) are never initiated
by a rousing "SSOOOOWWEEEEEEE! PIGG PIGG!" in conference committee or on
the floor.  Your separate office would be no better equipped to handle the
issue of "unneeded" expenditures than any other body politic, and might
actually start taking actions you attribute to the president: insisting
upon it's own pet project funding to let others through.  And from a non-
elected position!!  You can't even vote the bastards out!!

I can sympathize with what you're trying to accomplish, but I think you
need to keep looking for a less scary proposal.

-- 
Michael T. Palmer, M/S 152, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681
Voice: 804-864-2044,   FAX: 804-864-7793,   Email: m.t.palmer@larc.nasa.gov
PGP 2.0 Public Key now available -- Consider it an envelope for your e-mail
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics
From: cramer@unixland.natick.ma.us (Bill Cramer)
Subject: Re: Who's weakening the constitution?
Organization: Unixland Public Access Unix  (508) 655-3848
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 02:49:17 GMT

mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
: In <168BB89EF.MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com> MCMASTER@LSTC2VM.stortek.com (Jim McMaster) writes:
: >In article <1992Dec11.225632.20901@oakhill.sps.mot.com> on
: >Fri, 11 Dec 1992 22:56:32 GMT you write:
: > 
: >Women were not given the right to vote, and it took an amendment to
: >change that.
: 
: On a national level, quite true.  However, any State could have
: elected at any time to allow women to vote for Federal representatives
: and they would have been fully within their rights to do so (I think
: -- I'll have to look at the exact wording about who is allowed to
: vote).  In any case, your argument seems to be that because there are
: SOME things that require an amendment, that ALL things must require an
: amendment.  That simply doesn't seem to follow.

Actually, there's probably a good argument that today's court (well,
maybe not *today's* court, but certainly the Warren court) would find
that even without an amendment granting women the right to vote, such
a right is consistant with the 14th Amendment equal process clause.
The court's interpretation was that a law that implied an inferiority
upon some identifiable class was simply not consistant with the 
notion of equal protection.  

Obviously, congress in the days of the 14th amendment did not think
it had anything to do with voting, as they wrote the 15th amendment
a few years later, and the 19th some 50 years later.  However, the 
Warrent court declared voting a "fundamental right" (almost the same
as a constitutional right) in a poll tax case in 1966. (Perversely, 
had that decision, which banned poll taxes administered by states, 
been passed a few years earlier, we would have never needed the 24th 
amendment which banned poll taxes for national elections.)

Bill Cramer

251 West Central Street, Suite 142      | "If the law supposes *that*,...
Natick, MA 01760 USA                    |    the law is an ass, an idiot."
Internet: cramer@unixland.natick.ma.us  |        -- Dickens
CIS: 70322,3412                         |

Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc,tx.politics,misc.legal