Championship Subdivision Football | FCS Football | Stadiums | Blogs | Forums

"Egads!", quoth the set-in-his-backward-ass-ways fat cat Conk. "Like HELL", exclaims the Reagan Heston Limbaugh Palin Cruz Quayle Cheney W Tman crowd.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/innovati ... n-20131031" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's old, it's out of date, it facilities and perpetuates our quagmire. Needs a breath of life.

....Almost nobody uses the U.S. Constitution as a model—not even Americans. When 24 military officers and civilians were given a single week to craft a constitution for occupied Japan in 1946, they turned to England. The Westminster-style parliament they installed in Tokyo, like its British forbearer, has two houses. But unlike Congress, one is clearly more powerful than the other and can override the less powerful one during an impasse.

The story was largely the same in defeated Nazi Germany, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, which all emerged from American occupation with constitutions that look little like the one Madison and the other framers wrote. They have the same democratic values, sure, but different ways of realizing them. According to researchers who analyzed all 729 constitutions adopted between 1946 and 2006, the U.S. Constitution is rarely used as a model. What's more, "the American example is being rejected to an even greater extent by America's allies than by the global community at large," write David Law of Washington University and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

That's a not a fluke. The American system was designed with plenty of checks and balances, but the Founders assumed the elites elected to Congress would sort things out. They didn't plan for the political parties that emerged almost immediately after ratification, and they certainly didn't plan for Ted Cruz.




"GOD, I'd love to FUCK Chelsea Clinton!"

And factionalism isn't the only problem. Belgium, a country whose ethnic divisions make our partisan sparring look like a thumb war, was unable to form a governing coalition for 589 days in 2010 and 2011. Nevertheless, the government stayed open and fulfilled its duties almost without interruption, thanks to a smarter institutional arrangement.


Read the entire article, esp Conk jackasses. Open your minds, you buncha Ted Nugent khundts.

Sorry cap, but the guy appears to be saying that our Constitution isn't "good" because it makes it difficult for government to do things. I'll pass on his point of view with respect to what makes for a good Constitution.

One of the major points of the way things were designed here was to avoid the concentration of power. I don't know if it's worked as well as it was intended. For instance, I think there is way too much concentration of power in the Judiciary right now. But the idea of avoiding concentration of power is still one I fully support.

I think one premise behind an outlook such as that of the author is that government is good. It isn't. It's a necessary evil. And it should always be impeded as well as contained.

CAA Flagship wrote:

Now, that's GOOD, Flaggy!!!!

JohnStOnge wrote:Sorry cap, but the guy appears to be saying that our Constitution isn't "good" because it makes it difficult for government to do things. I'll pass on his point of view with respect to what makes for a good Constitution.

One of the major points of the way things were designed here was to avoid the concentration of power. I don't know if it's worked as well as it was intended. For instance, I think there is way too much concentration of power in the Judiciary right now. But the idea of avoiding concentration of power is still one I fully support.

I think one premise behind an outlook such as that of the author is that government is good. It isn't. It's a necessary evil. And it should always be impeded as well as contained.

Wrong. Government is good. Politics is evil.


Jefferson said the Constitution should be rewritten every generation to fit the contemporary needs of that era. He was smarter than any of you CruzLimbaughPalinConkfucks who revere it to the point of prostrated idolatry.

The document, once a beacon, is now antique curio like a 1976 copy of Juggs at a flea market.

Some of you Teabaggers might agree with me that we need another Consitutional Convention to tweak that rag.

The campaign financing section was hysterical... (that is an interesting article)

The genius of our Constitution is shown by how few amendments there have been: just 27. And the first 10 were the Bill of Rights, and two others (18 and 21, concerning "prohibition") cancelled each other out. Part of the reason that a Constitutional convention under Article V has never been called is that no one knows how far it would go in changing what we have. Constitutional scholars don't even agree on whether the scope of a convention, once called, could be restricted.

So spare me the pious pretentiousness of National Journal articles that imply we should be embarrassed that East Jerkoffistan didn't use our constitution as a model. These articles come out every five to ten years, and they're all the rage now that we have a con law "professor" in the White House. We don't know how good we have it.

Ivytalk wrote:The genius of our Constitution is shown by how few amendments there have been: just 27. And the first 10 were the Bill of Rights, and two others (18 and 21, concerning "prohibition") cancelled each other out. Part of the reason that a Constitutional convention under Article V has never been called is that no one knows how far it would go in changing what we have. Constitutional scholars don't even agree on whether the scope of a convention, once called, could be restricted.

So spare me the pious pretentiousness of National Journal articles that imply we should be embarrassed that East Jerkoffistan didn't use our constitution as a model. These articles come out every five to ten years, and they're all the rage now that we have a con law "professor" in the White House. We don't know how good we have it.

I want the Italian system - new government every 45 days or so. Plus they elect porn stars, and people bold enough to out themselves as the fascists they really are (I'm looking at you, GOP)

dbackjon wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:The genius of our Constitution is shown by how few amendments there have been: just 27. And the first 10 were the Bill of Rights, and two others (18 and 21, concerning "prohibition") cancelled each other out. Part of the reason that a Constitutional convention under Article V has never been called is that no one knows how far it would go in changing what we have. Constitutional scholars don't even agree on whether the scope of a convention, once called, could be restricted.

So spare me the pious pretentiousness of National Journal articles that imply we should be embarrassed that East Jerkoffistan didn't use our constitution as a model. These articles come out every five to ten years, and they're all the rage now that we have a con law "professor" in the White House. We don't know how good we have it.

I want the Italian system - new government every 45 days or so. Plus they elect porn stars, and people bold enough to out themselves as the fascists they really are (I'm looking at you, GOP)

yeah well if it wasnt for all the touristy antiquities in Italy (built in an era when Italians werent metrosexed socialist lazy dirtbags) they would be somewhere between Moldova and Kyrgystan in stature. with tomato paste

CID1990 wrote:

dbackjon wrote:

I want the Italian system - new government every 45 days or so. Plus they elect porn stars, and people bold enough to out themselves as the fascists they really are (I'm looking at you, GOP)

yeah well if it wasnt for all the touristy antiquities in Italy (built in an era when Italians werent metrosexed socialist lazy dirtbags) they would be somewhere between Moldova and Kyrgystan in stature. with tomato paste

Whoa..!!! Settle down there Tonto
Now I appreciate a good joke as much as the next guy but wait just a gosh darn second

Chizzang wrote:

CID1990 wrote:
yeah well if it wasnt for all the touristy antiquities in Italy (built in an era when Italians werent metrosexed socialist lazy dirtbags) they would be somewhere between Moldova and Kyrgystan in stature. with tomato paste

Whoa..!!! Settle down there Tonto
Now I appreciate a good joke as much as the next guy but wait just a gosh darn second

well its true

Rome is Chisinau with a colosseum

CID1990 wrote:

Chizzang wrote:

Whoa..!!! Settle down there Tonto
Now I appreciate a good joke as much as the next guy but wait just a gosh darn second

well its true

Rome is Chisinau with a colosseum

I love Rome
and I'm told Chisinau looks like Poland

I'm going to ignore you now.... excuse me while I pretend not to read your posts