Bill or Rights Could Have Been Longer

Noting that the first right in the Bill of Rights is that of  freedom of religion is quite common. That sounds great and just, considering many of the first Europeans fleeing to these shores did so for the free practice of religion.

In fact, the First Amendment was meant to be the third.

James Madison introduced 19 (some histories say 20) amendments at the Constitutional Convention. Just 12 made the cut to be sent to the 13 state legislatures existing under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. But only 10 were adopted, the first two lacking necessary ratification votes.

Originally the first would have proportioned House of Representatives according to population. Madison wanted to make sure that each Representative had a small constituency. Had that become the first of the Bill of Rights, the House would now number more than 6,000 members. In 1792 membership was set at 105. Later appropriations were made. The Constitution set no more than 30,000 constituents for every Representative. In 1911, the law set the number of House members at 435. After the 1920 census, the Congress failed to reapportion. In 1929 the law fixed the number at 435 with reapportionment after every census. The current formula was set in 1941. When Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states, the number was temporarily increased to 437, and reverted to 435 in 1962.

Proposed No. 2 amendment said no law raising pay for representatives and senators could take effect until an election of House members took place. Again, not enough states ratified it.

In 1982, a sophomore at the University of Texas, Gregory Watson, wrote a paper saying that because no time limit had been set on ratification the amendment was still in play. He got a C on the paper but took to writing letters to state officials. By May 1992 five more states voted yea and the 38th state sealed the deal. So 202 years and seven months later, thanks of a college student,  Madison’s exact language became the XXVII Amendment. The last one, so far.

So the freedoms of no state religion but the right to free practice of religion, free speech, free press, the right of peaceable assembly, and the right to ask the federal government to do the right thing got the primo spot in the list of changes to the basic charter of this cradle of democratic republics.

Rightly so. Americans dare not forget that, and they dare not fail to demand their rights.

By sheer coincidence this piece is being posted on the 226th anniversary of the submission of the

12 amendments to the then 13 states under the Confederation for ratification.

When "Yes" Means "No"

A U.S. senator or a representative wishing to support President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran will vote “no” when the legislation comes before the Congress.

Similarly, a lawmaker opposed will vote “yes.”

That is why Obama probably will have a chance to veto the bill that passes, even though passage means a majority of those in Congress oppose the presidential agreement joined in by other countries and already approved by the United Nations.

In effect, a vote for S. 615 is a vote to reject the agreement. Its title is the “Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015.” The key is “review.” By its nature, a review bill in Congress is a proposal of rejection. That was confirmed by a person answering the phone in the office of Sen. Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican, who introduced the bill.

A non-expert reading the Senate bill would be hard pressed to figure out the reverse English on the congressional cue ball. It reads just like the agreement is fine with our government’s legislative branch. In actuality it sets forth actions the president and his departments must take to make sure that Iran is fulfilling an agreement’s terms, terms which the Congress demands, such as strict verification.

Reading a summary of the senate bill prepared by a nonpartisan congressional research service supplies no additional clarification for the meaning of opposing votes.

Remember criticism of members of Congress who did not read the thousands of pages in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? There were summaries and there were staff members paid to find out what was in Obamacare.

Fact is bills and resolutions can be difficult to read, especially without some legal training. Even a one-line bill striking out the section number of an existing law can be far reaching with intended and unintended consequences.

Some senators opposed to the Iran agreement bill but supportive of the president are reported to be in favor of protecting the congressional prerogatives. It will be difficult to know that merely from their no votes.

Good citizenship can be burdensome.

DEBATE OR CATTLE CALL

Something better than a cattle call of presidential candidates is needed for future “debates.”

Fox News did try to round up smaller numbers of would-be nominees by dividing the 17 hopefuls into groups of seven with low polling numbers and the ten with higher numbers. Still too many for such a format of moderators asking questions.

Many of the questions were designed to entrap the hopefuls into explaining spoken words or statements later construed by press and opponents as less than precise or even pernicious. Good entertainment, but not very helpful to voters who will need to decide how to use their franchise in primary and general elections. Real issues are complex and viewpoints or proposed solutions cannot be put forth properly in a minute.

In the two hours given to the questioning of the upper tier, some questions were missing, although the candidates managed to get in a few references. Government debt, taxation, regulation, foreign relations.

Then there was the grade school exercise that opened the prime-time session. Ten adults having resumes of accomplishment in government or the private sector (versus the celebrity of cablecasting) were asked to raise hands if they might try a third party or independent run for president if denied the Republican Party nomination. Besides the undignified nature of the request, it was designed to smoke out but a single suspect candidate, which worked. That candidate could have been asked directly as such a threat applied only to him, as did such questions asked others based on their own words or actions.

Questions and other talk by the moderators consumed nearly 32 percent of the allotted time in the prime-time session. They used 31 minutes, 53 seconds according to a University of Minnesota researcher whose data was reported on the Web. The candidate -- the target of the hand raising, as it happened -- with the most time speaking did so for 10 minutes 32 seconds. Next used 8:32, and the tenth got 5:10.

A record 24 million people watched, the most ever for a non-sports, cable news show.  No one knows how many of those viewers will watch future debates or who used the first show to make up their minds. And, of course, how their reactions might affect the final outcome in November 2016 is not worth considering. Nonetheless, such a large number can have some consequences, such as retention of the format, one which is not that informative.

Why Not Real Debates?

Republican presidential hopefuls who have declared their candidacies already number 15 with more expected. Debate hosts are trying to develop plans to make their productions more valuable than mere live sound bites.

Fox News, the first host, has announced it will bring the top 10 poll leaders to a debate, with another session at another time for those finishing over No. 10.

Has any prospective sponsor come up with a more traditional debate format?

Not all high school graduates remember their alma maters probably had debate teams much less remember attending a debate. Rules were something like this:  There were two teams, sometimes only two debaters. One side took took the positive side of  question, and the other the negative. The teams were prepared for both. There also would be a team of judges.

Candidates for a party’s nomination don’t want to follow such rules, but something similar could be arranged that could very well serve voters well. Perhaps better than did debates of the past.

The Kennedy-Nixon clash was not preceded by debates involving numerous primary hopefuls.

Something along these lines might illuminate the political, historical and practical bona fides of those suggesting themselves for the highest office in the land, and one that has been the most influential in the world.  Names could be pulled from a hat, two at a time. Those two candidates would then get network TV time to debate each other. Debate topics would be the obvious ones: Recommendations for defense, foreign affairs, immigration, the economy, taxation.

Political debates don’t have to follow the Cambridge Union, the old English model for traditional debates. No need to put those topics in the form of questions. Each debater would proceed with, “ I would handle . . .” instead of the old debate formula of “Resolved, the country’s tax code, etc.”

A moderator would offer obvious national and international problems and keep time so that a number of pertinent issues could be covered in a reasonable total time. But the debaters would be left to fend for themselves. The moderator would not direct questions to the debaters, merely announce the topics.

Listening citizens would judge for themselves. News media and pundits would do their usual analysis, as would be expected.

Debates on the same topics would follow from other pairs selected at random until all the candidates were covered. There should be reluctance to exclude candidates with really miniscule polling numbers.

Might not such a series of debates have a better chance of revealing to the electorate the actual beliefs of hopeful nominees and their strengths and weaknesses? Widely known news anchors and correspondents would no longer be in position to color the proceedings.

Gone would be such questions as what would you do if your daughter sought an abortion, or your uncle wished to marry his male hairdresser . . . the typical “gotcha” queries.

Voters need to learn for themselves what the candidates are all about. Their handlers try to paint images. Let the candidates reveal themselves under the pressure of actual back and forth with an opponent needing to impress citizens inclined to vote.

Such a system might increase the turnout. That would be good for the country.

Meanwhile, the Commission on President Debates probably would continue to run the clashes between the two nominees. Created in 1987 by the two major parties, the commission has in the past limited entrance to those candidates polling at least 15 percent, thus practically barring third party candidates. Some movement has begun to change that gatekeeping strategy.

Real debates before state primaries might whittle the field earlier and thus serve the voting citizenry.

RUMINATIONS REGARDING ROLODEXES

Has your Rolodex disappeared from your desk?

Mine sits -- unused -- back near the wall. It hasn’t been disturbed for years, probably since I retired. That was not before word processors and computers, but way short of the laptop, the tablet and the smartphone.

Now and then a list of stuff out of the past, now artifacts for museums, can be found on one’s email, an offering from a friend of spends time surfing for such profundities. Such lists can reach from here to there. Such things as washers with ringers, rotary phones, curb feelers. Those just popped into mind; that short list may just prove the point that technology is easy to appreciate, but customs and behaviors shouldn’t be forgot either.

Manners and how to interact with others of the community have undergone real change. Perhaps those intangibles are more important than whether you have updated your phone and family plan with T-Mobile or whatever.

Hasn’t there been a nearly endless chain of improvement in things since someone somewhere sometime found that a wheel could move loads? (Did the same genius invent the axle?)

Invention has undoubtedly made the human condition easier. Yet some real things that cannot be noted by one of the senses but can be felt by emotions must be more important, for they cannot have changed greatly over the eons. Philosophy, an intangible of great utility, and similarly mathematics cannot be touched yet are fodder for grey matter. They have existed for millennia. Granted,  they have evolved and have been refined and are still evolving to some degree, but basically their roots remain vigorous. Technology depends upon basics as well: fulcrum, inclined plane, screw. Those are similar to intangibles because they were ideas before becoming rudimentary machines.

Philosophy equalled science in ancient Greece. Now, even the engineer, chemist, physicist with the top academic degree is a Doctor of Philosophy.

Things and ideas. Ideas and things. Which came first?

The intangible is the thing.

Abstract. Concrete. They go together.

Early man (maybe a female) had to think through the sharpening of a stick to help loosen soil to plant a whatever. First the need had to be seen, then gauging a sturdy stick to withstand digging the dirt followed. It could have happened no other way, granting that that talented person of that prehistoric period could have stumbled onto such a method. Thought, however, was needed just to recognize and continue using it.

The abstract must have come first.

What kind of employee or boss is most valuable to the entrepreneur?  He or she who thinks. He or she may also use his or her hands to type or build a model, but thought precedes words on paper, and the clay, wood or metal mockup. Generally, the person who designs the truck is paid more than the one driving it.

Creative thought is key to enterprise, whether for profit or the common good.

Not too long ago a salesman, a beautician, a reporter, an executive revolved the loaded Rolodex to find the phone number, address or some bit of information about a client or a vendor. Before the entry was made, its value was calculated, its place in the alphabet was ascertained, the information was condensed. Today one clicks or taps on the computer screen or thumbs the apps on a phone and gets the same type of information. The need for the information, its selection and gathering all require thought --- abstract activity. Only the equipment has changed.

Similarly behavior has changed through the ages. Brutishness gave way to cooperation to manners to foppishness to courtesy to polite society. Some commentators would proclaim society has begun to see much selfishness and unconcern or others, a lack of civility, a downward path back to brutishness.

A few old bucks still hold door for ladies, and a few ladies will favorably comment on that behavior. How often has a youth been seen doing that, or stepping aside for an elder?

Some thoughtfulness regarding civility could bring a better public square. But that is an abstraction.

We all need what can be felt and that which can only be visualized.

How to save that thought?

HOPE TECHNOLOGY FAILS NOT

So here I sit in my recliner processing words on my TV screen.

I just saw on the History Channel the reputed 101 most important inventions. No.1 was the smart phone. The personal computer was fourth. I believe the show ranked the light bulb as five. Edison invented the first dependable bulb in 1879. some six years before my father was born. He died shortly after man walked on the moon.

Amazing are the objects, gizmos, whatevers that ease and even monopolize our lives. Although we are human beings, we perhaps could not live without them now. Imagine losing electric power. Completely.

But our forebears lived without these conveniences. Could we live like our ancestors? Yes, I suppose some could, but with difficulty. Actually, if a terrorist act or series of acts wiped out our means of existing -- electricity, running water, transportation -- not many people would survive, even after getting through the rioting and plunder that would follow such disaster in every affected community, not to mention the ripple effects. Perhaps a few brave people who had taken to the wilderness for solitude would not notice the horror and go on with life relatively unaffected.

Is there any way our civilization could weather a magnetic blast in the stratosphere that wiped out a goodly portion of the electrical grid? Or whatever catastrophe unleashed by an enemy or terrorist cabal? Who really knows? There is hope the government has plans to cope. Maybe not. Maybe incomplete. Maybe worthless. Maybe we could luck-out. Muddle through.

Seldom do we assess our dependence upon technological progress. Entrepreneurial fatalists advertise survival foods that will keep for a quarter century (although they may be attracting Mormons who are instructed to prepare for the future). Other than those, most of us are unwilling to imagine what could happen.

Perhaps no preparation exists for catastrophes of such magnitude. Think back to Katrina and Sandy. (Although those areas now resemble normality.) Yet, somewhere, a newspaper or TV station will survive to second-guess everyone and every governmental entity for failures to prepare.

How well are we prepared to rely on technology and the governmental types using it to uncover terrorist plots and deal with them?  We wish to remain safe, but we expect protection of our constitutional rights. Others of us say survival trumps rights. Only specific aberrations can be examined and used for guidance.

Meanwhile, trust could be the only course.

Nonetheless, the blessings of technology realistically come with potential dangers.

Pessimism is hardly the correct reaction. Hope must reign. Hope, after all, is a virtue. In times like these, virtue is needed. Required.

And planning wouldn’t hurt.

DEMOCRATS IN LOCKSTEP, GOP INDECISIVE

Why are Republicans criticized in the mainstream press for expressing differing views on major national issues, while Democrats are praised for their strength in adhering to party-dictated positions?

Resolving disagreements over a possible solution to a national problem seems more logical than blindly  proffering one proposal as a political tactic.

Positions declared de rigueur and then followed in lockstep seem by their very nature to be suspect. Is it not self-evident that people who ponder real problems would have some debate on ways to overcome such problems? Declaring a correct answer without allowing room for reasonable doubt can block real consideration of acceptable ways -- one or more of which conceivably could be effective -- to resolve the problem at hand.

Thinking people must wonder why Hillary Clinton is, not only the Democratic frontrunner for 2016, but considered the nominee so early. Could her dominance be the influence of Democratic Party ideology.

This ideology seems to accept government dominance over individual actions. Intended or not, if such an ideology were to become law the exercise of individual free will would be severely handicapped.

Is that too harsh an assessment?

Leave aside for the sake of argument the wisdom of these issues, but rather consider the Democratic litmus tests assigned to abortion, same-sex marriage, LGBT behavior, climate change, governmental debt.Democratic politicians with open religious ties are prone to set their social (moral?) beliefs aside as easily as civil matters in the name of party allegiance.

Democratic Party discipline permits little if any deviation. Personal beliefs are tolerated only after attesting to the sovereignty of governmental authority.

Such “blood-brother” bonds are rarely found among Republicans as a party. The closest among GOP adherents is the vitriol heaped on RINOs. Republicans In Name Only are those believing in some social laxity simultaneously with fiscal governmental discipline. Conservative Republicans are more likely to apply litmus tests to others claiming the Republican label. Middle of the Road Republicans are more likely to espouse conservative ideals tempered by the reality of inter-partisan battles.

Democrats are more likely to organize and demonstrate that organization. Republicans seem to be somewhat lax in organizational skills. Look back a few years when Democrats and their public unions wing occupied the Wisconsin capitol. Was that episode akin to the sit-down strikes at automobile plants in the late 1930s? (Maybe even Republicans in retrospect can find some justification for the intensity of those strikes.)

No doubt American culture has coarsened in recent decades. Ozzy and Harriet long ago gave way to Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. Movies went from one-foot- on-the-floor in bedroom scenes to full frontal nudity. Newspapers went from gray ladies full of local, national and international happenings supported by department store advertising to thinner and thinner full-color repositories of opinion, entertainment and gossip gasping for existence.

Our political parties have come to reflect cultural changes. Democrats probably reflect current culture more closely. Republicans still show nostalgia for Red Skelton and Jimmy Durante and chaperoned cotillions with long dresses and corsages.

From liberal to libertine.

From laissez faire to free enterprise.

Perhaps an oversimplification. Yet there is truth in the distillation.

Too much partisanship and a divided government in Washington have been cited by pundits and politicians alike. Any solution? Maybe the only one is the emergence of candidates on both sides of the aisle who can appeal to voters concerned about the future of citizenship, culture and a growing economy. Candidates must seek to meld idealism and practicality and then, upon gaining office, work to carry through with such lofty goals.

They must always act and vote to further the wellbeing of  their constituents and their country, not themselves.

Impossible? Then representative government is impossible.