TN General Assembly Attendance & Expulsion

UPDATE: I have moved this April 5, 2007, post back up to the top because of its continued timeliness. I have also added at the end a quotation from and link to a very relevant Tennessee Attorney General's opinion.

I heard that a traveling Tennessee State Senator recently told a meeting here in Memphis that nothing could be done about Ophelia Ford missing most of the legislative session. That didn't sound correct to me, so I looked the law up on attendance and expulsion from the Tennessee Senate.

From the Tennessee Constitution:

§ 5. [Organization — Proceedings — Adjournment.] —

[1.] Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties as each house may provide.

[2.] Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.

So it seems the real question is not whether anything can be done to a State Senator missing most of the session. The real question is why nothing has been done about it.

Here's another angle on the issue, from a recent Tennessee Attorney General opinion:

A legislator violates the oath of office by failing to exercise his or her impartial judgment in voting for an appointment, by voting for a bill or resolution that “appears” to him or her to be “injurious to the people,” or by consenting to “any act or thing . . . that shall have a tendency to abridge their rights and privileges” under the Tennessee Constitution. An official would violate the general statutory oath of office by failing to perform his or her official duties “with fidelity.”

Tenn. Op. Att'y Gen 05-106 (2005).

So it's not just whether Ophelia Ford has violated her oath of office. It's also every other member of the Tennessee General Assembly who is "consenting to 'any act or thing . . . that shall have a tendency to abridge [the people of Senate District 29's] right[]' under the Tennessee Constitution" to have a sitting and working Senator performing her official duties with fidelity. Every Senator who is not currently striving to boot Ophelia is failing to perform his or her duties with fidelity. Whether Ophelia's violation of her oath of office is due to her "act[s]" in necessitating hospitalization during session or whether her absence for any reason is only a "thing" abridging my right to be represented is not constitutionally important. Some would cast the dilemma in terms of depriving Ophelia of health care benefits. Ophelia does not deserve those benefits any more than she deserves a legislative paycheck; but this State has programs that could take the place of those benefits. I have heard that Ophelia has taken advantage of one such program before anyway. Another alternative is to offer her some state "job" that would preserve her benefits for the duration of her Senate term if she would just resign.

The real reason she hasn't been booted is raw politics. Senator Jim Kyle has tried to do something short of expulsion; but his plan was rebuffed by the State Attorney General as unconstitutional before it could be debated by the General Assembly. Republicans in the State Senate think it is funny that I don't have a Senator, because the Democrats in the Senate previously tried to keep Ophelia in there under the same circumstances and because Ophelia's absence deprives the Democrats of a key vote in the closely divided Senate.

I am getting angry writing this, but I will not call all you "Senators" names, even though truly I feel like doing so. I will repeat, however: each and every one of you that is not currently trying to expel the absent Senator -- so District 29 can have representation -- is violating your own oath of office.

Ron Paul & Ronald Reagan

This video speaks beautifully and eloquently for itself. Watch it and ask yourself what has happened to your political "thinking" these days.

Burglar Killed by My Neighbor!

Might have been the same pitiful cocksucker who burglarized me. Let's just say the Lord has hardened my heart against these bastards.

Read all about it here.

UPDATE: Burglar's death ruled justifiable.

Goodbye Ron Paul

From the Dallas Morning News, January 23, 2008:

Dr. Paul said his efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade aren't at odds with his libertarian philosophies.

"I honor and respect the notion that our homes are our castles, and I don't want the government in our homes," he said.

"That does not say that the parents of children in a home have the right to kill their children."

Evidently, Ron Paul has more respect for a person's ownership of a piece of real estate than he does for a person's ownership of her own body.

So I deleted Ron Paul's blog button.

As a single issue, abortion rights trumps even noninterventionism.

Goodby, Ron Paul. I'm glad I never gave you money, as I did David Bergland. I'll be unsubscribing from your email newsletter too.

Go ahead and run third party and steal some deciding votes from one of the Republicans married to this modern-day disaster of a position.

Thanks for one thing though: showing libertarians they don't have to follow that idiotic plank on open borders in the party platform, originally thrown in by the handful of nobodies at their little meeting somewhere back when.

Oh, and thanks for one more thing: arguing against the stupid Iraq War. You know, wars kill real "children" in a much more heartbreaking and wasteful way than abortions kill so-called "children."

One day there may come along a brilliant, charismatic modern libertarian to help this country out. You may have helped pave the way for such a person, Ron; you're just not that person.

Sayonara, Ron Paul.

Sixth Circuit Panel Guts the Ex Post Facto Clause

I delayed writing about this until I checked Tennessee's lawyer ethics rules to see if I could criticize a judicial decision to this degree. What I got out of my research is that -- as long as I do not cast aspersions on the judges' personal characters -- I am not prohibited from posting something like this.

In case you haven't noticed, there is a legislator phenomenon I characterize as piling on for political posturing purposes, that attaches to certain topics or offenses in certain eras. One recent example is the legislative overkill about DUI offenses.

But the one I'm writing about here is the hysteria that causes Constitution-violating legislation that piles more punishment on prior sexual offenders. Why does this kind of crap pass? It's really simple: chicken-shit legislators are afraid to vote against it.

Don't get me wrong. Any creep that predates sexually upon another without legal consent deserves prosecution and punishment. How much that punishment should be is a legitmate subject for debate, although I always flash back to The Godfather telling the undertaker that death was not appropriate for the creeps who raped his daughter, because his daughter was still alive.

But there is this provision in the Constitution of the United States that prohibits ex post facto laws that increase the punishment for criminal acts after they have been committed.

Read the following linked article and Sixth Circuit opinion to see whether you think that divided three-judge panel observed the mandates of the most precious document protecting human rights ever made into supreme law. I know what I think.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071117/NEWS03/711170360/-1/ARCHIVES

http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/07a0456p-06.pdf

Inherited Political Power

UPDATE: I republished this two-year-old post because of its increased relevance, with the last sentence in the next-to-last paragraph bolded.

I had to recall one of my pet sayings when I read this post: Jeb Bush leaves open White House bid:

The one thing we were never supposed to have in America is inherited political power.

Think George III, royal idiot and bane of the American colonies. Now we have Bush I and Bush II, and here is the press wondering about Bush III.

We may presume that King 1.0 came up by merit, even if that merit was measured in ambition and ruthlessness as well as ability; but Kings 2.0 and beyond ascend to the throne purely by accident of birth, often combined with palace intrigue by powerful court figures. Incompetence, stupidity, serious character defect, and even madness in the royal line have been apparent throughout history. This method of passing along political power may help explain the extraordinary influence of Dick Cheney behind the scenes during the reign of Bush 2.0.

Even a democracy is prone to inherited political power because of name recognition and the raising of the children of the powerful in well-connected and well-to-do circles of associates.

It is so easy, too easy, to create and jump on a bandwagon pulled by a candidate who is already rich in the currency of celebrity. I must confess I did it once myself in the past; but now I see that growing up in the shadow of power can create tendencies that are not optimal and that can cause a politician to fall short in ways that either impair him in office or would likely cause him to lose to a worthier opponent somewhere on the way up the ladder.

For a while I advanced the facetious idea that political heirs inheriting name recognition should pay the same sort of inheritance tax on the votes they receive at the polls that they supported families having to pay in money after a death in the family. There's a certain logic there, however unworkable, in equating fame and money as two resources families have to promote their members' interests in life.

John Quincy Adams was a very effective Secretary of State but shared his father John Adams' impetuous, intense and often vehement temperament and had a relatively ineffective single term as President, losing to Andrew Jackson. Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison and a Congressman's son to boot, was elected despite losing the popular vote but, unable to surmount budget and trade problems, was defeated for a second term by Grover Cleveland.

In our time, George Bush I being followed by George Bush II, who led us into another pre-emptive war even more clearly unjustified than his dad's and whose initiatives brought back huge budget deficits, shows me that inherited political power in a democracy can be downright dangerous and is best avoided. I am fully aware my position has implications for Bill and Hillary "Carpetbag" Clinton.

In our celebrity-driven culture, American voters should make themselves a personal pledge not to support relatives of a famous government official for political office. Otherwise, we may wind up with only a handful of royal families competing at election time. The rest of us, with all our ideas and abilities, will just be shut out of the process. Think about it.