There has been a great deal of talk about the several cases trying to remover and/or keep Donald J. Trump’s name off of the Ballot next year. Most of the talk has been about Trump being kept out of the elect, to prevent him from being elected President once again. A while this is very important it may not be the most significant issues to be decided in these cases. I would like to place just a few of the “lesser” issues that I have been shown by the “legal eagles” out there. They are not given in any particular order. Just as they come to mind as I write this. Also as the Colorado case is the first in the Que I will just be talking about it.

Above I am sharing the Section (AKA “Clause”) that is what is in question. Next please remember that what is really going to be argued about is both a question of fact and questions of definition or meaning. With just a dash of intent. This last point I’m not going to address here. What we are going to be looking at is just what this Am

To me one of the most interesting questions brought up is “Is the President an Officer of the United States”? A before you go, “Of course he/she is.” The Constitution does not explicitly say the President and/or the Vice President are “Officers of the United States”. Just take a moment to look at the arguments for why he/she may not be. There are many arguments to be made and the one being used by many is the ‘Textualism Doctrine’ view. While I have many disagreements with this Doctrine here my problem is with the idea that if something is not explicitly in the Constitution then the federal government has no authority over it. This is often know as the “Constitution Stands Silent” principle. And it is very tricky to use.

First there is the problem that in the modern world there are a great many thing that were not even dreamed of when the Constitution and/or its Amendments were first written. Just to name three we have “railroads”, “Air travel”, and “electrical communications (radio, telegraph, internet, etc”. None of these common everyday things in the modern world existed when Just take a moment to look at the arguments for why he/she may not be. Railroads were not around when the constitution and the first 10 amendments were adopted. Maned flight was around when a majority of the Amendments were adopted. An the internet was just a wild dream in some SF writers minds in 1971when the latest Amendment was adopted. Does this mean that the Federal government has no power over them? Do we leave it all up to the States? What about when they cross State borders?

An those are just the start of the questions that need to be addressed. That is why I take the position that looking at the actual text is just a starting point and why the “Stands Silent” doctrine needs careful handing. What needs to be asked is “Why does the Constitution stand silent?” Three things need to be addressed

1. Did the Authors know or could have known about the subject at hand?
2. If yes to one, is there any evidence that the Authors deliberately ignored the subject?
3. Is there any reason to think that the subject had already adequately covered in the text?

These are just three of the questions that need to be addressed, I am sure you can think of more.

Finally I’d like to point out that the Authors of the Constitution and it’s Amendments were are all well educated, well read, thoughtful people. You can take it for granted that they didn’t do something just for giggles, even when we see things now that make no sense. (I’m thinking of the 3/4ths clause). With just a little digging you can usually find good reason for why it was done. (Agian the 3/4ths clause). So when you see an interpretation of the Constitution that makes no sense, that is a good indicator of bad reasoning. This is my position on saying that the President and Vice President are Officers of the United States. To say everyone in the Executive Branch, except the President and Vice President are “Officers of the United States”, on the face of it, makes little to know sense.

Next time my take on the Originalist take of the question.

Just for fun, let us try to think about the structure an Authoritarian United States would look like. I’m not talking about how it would come about, nor what life would be like but what the government and formal structure would look like. An yes this is a nerdie Political Science experiment.

First some rules:

1. No magic, nor any fantastic science can be used. So no ancient evil demons or gods. No mind controlling computers.
2. Keep the changes as clean and simple as possible. So no writing a completely new constitution. Amendments are ok, but no replacing whole articles with totally new text.
3. Don’t get rid of the States. Yes you can reduce or remove their power but they have to still exist and function to some degree.
4. You have to show how it would work. Think of how you would explain our current system to someone who has never heard of the USA.

Now I know a some few of you say this is not possible but I would like to point out that Caesar Augustus did this to the Roman Republic two thousand years ago. So think about what offices need to be changed and how. What changes to the three branches would need to be made? How they work together? Who controls what and when. How would you change things to get the several states to fall in line and do as they are told.

So lets get to it!

Of late I’ve been hearing a great deal about just what is going to happen after the 2024 election. Most of it is quite negative for the ’libertards’ and the Democratic Party. Some even talk about the coming total dominance of of the GOP and Donald Trump. I’d like to take sometime to look at it a little differently. From the view of a student of the American Civil War and the decade that proceeded it.

While most Americans know that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican President few know that the Republican Party did not exist in 1850. Only ten short years before Lincoln’s election. Nor do they know of just how troubled the politics of the US was in the 1850’s. Many of the issues we are dealing with today we were dealing with then. Immigration, race, states rights, and political corruption, just to name a few. All of these issues, and how they were dealt with can give us some clues as to what is going to happen now.

The 1850s was the true spread of new communications technology that greatly increased the speed and easy of communications with the spread of three innovations…..The steam Boat, The railroads, and finally the telegraph. Let’s just look at two, Trains and the Telegraph. With the spread of trains that could reach the unheard of speed of 50 MPH. Just think of it, in one hour you could travel the same distance that would have taken you two days hard travel by foot or horseback. The telegraph had even bigger effect as news could spread across the country in hours instead of weeks. Just think of it, what happened New Orleans in the afternoon would be in the morning edition of the Boston newspapers. We in the 21st Century like to marvel out how much Smartphones, Social Media, and the internet have changes (speeded up) our world. But rest assured our ancestors of the 1850s were just as amazed as we.

This is why I feel that we can learn a lot from a careful study of the USA in the 1850’s. We gone thru this before. The problems we face now have antecedents then and the solutions they found, no mater how good or bad they were can help us make sense of what is happen now and what we can and should do and not do. So that said, lets get on with my ideas of what is to come.

First and foremost by the election of 2032 the Republican party will no longer be a major player. Like the Wigs of 1860, they will still exist here and there but they will no longer be one of the big two. What the new party will be like I have no clear idea. Just like in 1852 few, if any, people would predict just what the Republican party of 1860 would be like. I am confident that it will consider itself ”Conservative” what ever that means.

In the area of political corruption I fully expect the problem of gerrymandering will ether be solved or its solution identified and being worked on. The same with the issue of ’Dark Money’. I hope that the ’Dark Money’ solution will entail dealing with the gross miss-use of LLCs. As always corruption is always found in both business and politics and therefore the solution(s) will be in business and politics.

Well, that’s all for now. To those who were expecting ideas on how to deal with the problems show here, sorry. I’m having enough of hard time trying to clearly identifying the problem. I do promise to continue my research into the 1850s in hope of identifying possible solutions. Hope you, dear reader have been encouraged to do the same.

With the election over but for the shouting I thought I’d put in a few words on the continuing ”Sheldon Crisis” happening. While we still have something like 12 House seats to be called at this writing it is still anybodies game on who will control the House in the next Congress. The best numbers I’ve been fallowing give the GOP control with 218-220 (1 to 3 seat control) I toght I’d just point out some things the House GOP will be facing soon.

First some things to keep in mind are: First in the last Congress the Dems, for once, did not have as fractious caucus as the GOP will have in the new Congress. Next is that the last time we had a Congress with such a slim majority for a party and the Majority party had such a fanatical member caucus was way back in 1856, or there about. Finally Kevin McCarthy has little to no experience running a majority Caucus.

So what can we look forward to in the coming weeks…..

First I expect to see a knock-down drag-out battle over leadership in the GOP House Caucus. An not just for the speakership, keep you eyes on who gets to be the Whip and who gets to be the Chair of the GOP Leadership. If any of these three go to members of the “Freedom Caucus” then things are going to get wild.

Depending on the results of the Leadership battle I expect to see little or nothing done (best case scenario) to hearings after hearing investigating all things Biden and/or Democratic and/or things MAGA hates. If MAGA gets the Speakership the only real question will be if Biden is Impeached two or three times.

An the worst case scenario is for the GOP to fail to fund the government and close down everything for several weeks. I really don’t expect this last one because the last time they tried this they got totally sandbagged in the next election.

So that’s all for now.