when did "conservatives " begin to distinguish between a "democracy" and a "republic?"

The constitution is not bulletproof. There is no objective way to interpret any text. The real constitution is in the virtue of the people.

The beauty of the US constitution is that common people can see when it's having the piss taken out of it. "Shall not be infringed" is pretty obvious language, and ordinary people can smell when bureaucrats warp its meaning.

Still, the constitution on its own does jack ****. Anyone who controls SCOTUS can reinterpret it at will.

 

Correct, it contains several defects and Trojan Horses as it stands.

Also correct as it stands. That's why I suggested 12 Amendments that might at least correct the majority of the defects, including the one above, but even with all of those corrections nothing is perfect.

 

What??? Authoritarian, totalitarian, and autocratic governments are always run by laws. It is simply a matter of who writes the laws.

 

I get and accept your point. I just don't agree.

 

A nation run by laws is not authoritarian so long as the laws are not under the control of the authoritarian government.

 

Some say potāto, some say potäto. You are making a point over semantics. If a state confiscates a manufacturing plant from a corporation, or the federal government simply takes whatever vehicles it wants from GM or Ford, are those things taken from the corporation or the stockholders? The stockholders don't lose anything unless and if the value of their shares -- which is what they own, not the bricks and machinery or cars -- drops. The value of their shares also might drop if the weather turns bad, or not. Or, what if the value of their shares goes up after the confiscation? Is the confiscation now perfectly acceptable and legal??? If someone sues a corporation do the shareholders have to show up in court?

By your logic there is no company or entity that is not considered as and equivalent to people. If people are protected under the bill of rights then all entities-- corporations, partnerships, LLCs, non-profits, government agencies, etc. -- are so protected.

 

I don't know if SCOTUS was aware of the count or not, but it does not matter. I don't know what "indirectly crowned" means but it is certainly not the same as appointed or decided which was the claim that I refuted. SCOTUS most certainly stop a count if that counting is unlawful or unconstitutional. That is exactly what they did in Florida when it ruled the FLA supreme court had no business jumping into the voting controversy -- because it is an appellate only court -- and, most importantly, it had no authority whatsoever to effect, affect, change, or dictate the vote counting process, so SCOTUS told the FLA court to butt out and told the Florida administration to continue following the rules and laws as established by the legislature. SCOTUS said or ruled nothing regarding who won or lost the election.

BTW, SCOTUS could have done the same thing in e.g. PA with the 2020 election if they chose to. Trump (and others) has the authority to try to get the voting stopped or changed through legal recourse, and he has the right and authority to challenge the congressional electoral college tabulations.

 

Precisely what I said, that authoritarian governments are run by laws just like any other type of government.

 

Nope. As Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out in her interview, the SCOTUS had no business intervening in a matter under the jurisdiction of the FSC.
And when you say "the voters decided the election" that too is false. Not only from the perspective that Gore won the national popular vote but also because..........NORC found that with a full statewide hand recount, Gore would have won Florida under every possible vote standard. Depending on which standard was used, his margin of victory would have varied from 60 to 171 votes.

 

The Court was correct, and Sandra Day was wrong. The FSC has no non-appellate jurisdiction whatsoever over the election process.

 

Answer to the OP. Since as long ago as I can remember, at least 40 years.

 

That's why you guys should let me do it.

 

Write a new one for us.

 

I promise that that will not happen if you turn over the entire government to me.

 

Ridiculous. No one, including the SCOTUS, made that specious argument. The SCOTUS ruling was based on the equal protection clause, claiming because FL had no uniform way of interpreting the intent of the challenged votes, and since no such standards could be put in place in time to meet the arbitrary deadline set for vote count completion, the count of legal votes must stop.
As RBG points out in her dissent, the SCOTUS had no legal justification to intervene in a matter under the control of FL's SC.

I might join the Chief Justice were it my commission to interpret Florida law. But disagreement with the Florida court’s interpretation of its own State’s law does not warrant the conclusion that the justices of that court have legislated. There is no cause here to believe that the members of Florida’s high court have done less than “their mortal best to discharge their oath of office,” and no cause to upset their reasoned interpretation of Florida law.
https://lithub.com/when-ruth-bader-ginsburg-dissented-in-bush-v-gore/

 

It is worth noting the SCOTUS recommended its own controversial ruling never be used as precedent.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZPC.html

It was a partisan carve out to ensure a Repub's victory.

 

If the state confiscates any property absent due process, the state violates the 5th Amendment, period. The value of the shares (which would naturally drop in such a case) is irrelevant, a non sequitur. It doesn't matter who shows up in court (attorneys for the defendants and the relevant defendants - i.e. human beings), that's also irrelevant.

SCOTUS has no constitutional authority to stop the count in an election. Once the count is completed, SCOTUS can upon petition for writ of certiorari raised by a complainant with proper standing (a candidate), determine if the voting and/or the counting of votes was constitutionally compliant or not. If it wasn't, then the only remedy would be to order that the defect is cured and a re-vote or a re-count takes place depending on the type of defect. By stopping the count, SCOTUS elected the President based on an incomplete count, the same thing that would have happened if Trump had his way.

 

That's unnecessary, the Constitution contains the remedy for correcting defects. See Post #90 (link to Proposed Constitutional Amendments).

 

Okay, so how would you personally amend it? I'm not opening up a link that takes me to some person I can't respond to.

 

Opinion. You can't know what's in a person's mind unless they articulate their thoughts out loud. Otherwise, it's just suspicion and cynicism.

"Hillary wanted to be president so that she could appoint feminists to the Supreme Court."

"Obama wanted to be President to implement Marxism."

"Trump wanted to be president so that he could award contracts to his sons."

Maybe. How does it help to say things like this?

 

No one can personally amend the Constitution, read Article V. In fact, one of my proposed amendments would amend Article V such that anyone can propose an Amendment but will have to get a minimum number of signatories in order to proceed.

It's a link to a post in a thread I started in this forum, it's not going to bite you. If you post something in that thread that's relevant and worthy of a response you will get one.

 

Who owned the bricks and machinery in the plant that the state confiscated, the corporation or the shareholders? In case you are unsure, I'll give you a hint. The corporation has the title to and owns the physical plant, not the shareholders. If someone sues the corporation (they never sue the shareholders) and the corporation and the people are one and the same, why don't the people shareholders have to appear in court? If someone sues a corporation for damages they incurred because of the corporation's actions, and wins, they never get redress from individual (people) shareholders. You are getting way wrapped around the axle.

SCOTUS did not stop the vote counting in the 2000 election in Florida`. They stopped the FSC from unconstitutionally interfering in the counting and told it to stop its unconstitutional meddling and unconstitutionally trying to dictate new counting procedures. SCOTUS does not and did not have to wait until the counting was over before getting involved in such matters and making such a ruling.

 

What part of "The FSC has no non-appellate jurisdiction whatsoever over the election process" is the hardest for you to comprehend? Actually it has no jurisdiction whatsoever over the vote gathering and counting procedures, period, appellate or not. The FSC can become involved as an appellate court in matters that others have sued over the procedures, but that is not at all what they did. They just looked at the counting, didn't like what they saw, and tried to unilaterally (and unconstitutionally) change it.

 

Once again, it's irrelevant. Any confiscation of property absent due process violates the 5th Amendment.

Check the mirror.

I stand corrected, wrong term, it was a recount that was illegally stopped by SCOTUS.

The Florida vote was ultimately settled in Bush's favor by a margin of 537 votes when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Bush v. Gore, stopped a recount that had been initiated upon a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida

 

Authoritarianism is where rule of law is weakened, rule by a man and/or lack of plurality of men is strengthened. (and by 'man/men' woman/women is inclusive, but it's usually men ).

It gets more complicated than that, but, at it's very essence, that is what it is.

Totalitarianism is authoritarianism in the extreme, where rule of law is greatly diminished, if it exists at all.

I think you do not understand this, which is why you are accusing those who write laws against your wish as 'authoritarian'. If it were that simple, then any opposing view is 'authoritarian', at which point the term becomes meaningless.