MARCH
28, 2007 --
The
LPR plan to get Washington back on track can be summed up
in five words "follow common sense, not cleverness."
This is the essence of the advice Chief Justice Marshall gave us, at the end
of his opinion in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824).
This very wise jurist warned that the Constitution will be unworkable if cleverness
prevails over common sense.
The rule of cleverness over common sense encourages "gotcha" government,
where charges of scandals turn the exercise of constitutional power into excuses
for dismissal.
LPR proposes that the members of the House and Senate, and Supreme Court of the
United States, honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and decline to erode
the "separation of powers" form
of government our Founders established as a bulwark against despotism.
(Please see Federalist Papers nos.
45 - 51.)
To honor "separation of powers," the President and the Congress should
refrain from taking political differences to court for judges to decide.
Litigation over political differences is, LPR believes, an abdication of the
constitutional authority delegated
to the executive and legislative branches. In our Republic, aren't political
differences to be resolved by the representatives of the people -- or by the
people, the next election day? LPR believes so.
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LPR believes that "separation
of powers" precludes the filing of criminal charges against elected
officials until the officials have been removed from office.
Madison, in Federalist No. 41, commented: "A bad cause seldom fails to
betray itself." LPR is confident that if an official has become a "bad
cause," the
constitutional mechanism for removal from office will remove any political
aspect to accusations, which then, properly, could be brought in court by a
prosecutor.
Indictment of a sitting official, of itself, does not necessarily preclude
the possibility that the accusation is a clever wrapping of a political package.
The alternative to applying the common sense approach set forth in the Constitution
to settling political
difference, is to encourage, further, the decline of our representative government
into "gotcha-ism," where the aim is not the common good but partisan
well-being.
It is unclear to LPR how the common good is served by" gotcha" government
and permanent presidential campaigning.
For LPR, partisan tactics and strategies
that ignore the Constitution's procedures for settling political disputes undermine
the Constitution -- and, thereby, endanger our liberty.
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