Amendments, Independence and Change

Proposed Constitutional Amendments

As I pondered Independence Day and saw that American approval of Congress and the Supreme Court had fallen to all time lows, I thought of some changes that may make the institutions less intolerable.  In no particular order:

Any two adults may marry as they choose and no legal benefit or privilege of that 

Marriage can be denied by any state, the federal government, or any agency.

Congress shall pass no law limiting the natural right of the People to procure, grow, cultivate manufacture or physically ingest any substance derived primarily from vegetation.

Congress may pass no law in respect of religion, and no court, judge, justice of the Supreme Court, agency, administrator, President, or Congressional body may accept any non-secular or religious belief, faith, opinion, teaching, rule or dogma as fact or evidence for any purpose whatsoever.

A person may serve as a member of congress, meaning either the House of Representatives or the senate, for no more than eight cumulative years in the member's lifetime.

Justices of the US Supreme Court may serve on the court for no more than eight cumulative years in a lifetime. 

From the effective date of this Amendment, Justices of the Supreme Court, Senators and Representatives alike shall receive from the US treasury an annual salary equal to the per capita income in the United States as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the year that member of Congress is elected to office, or the Justice is appointed.  Adjustments to the calculated pay up or down shall be made every two years during the member's or Justice's 's service. The human constituents of a representative's district, or in the case of a Senator or Justice, his or her resident state's human residents, may pay the member additional compensation, but only upon full, unlimited, contemporaneous public disclosure of the payor, the dates of payment and the amount of payment. No other payment or consideration of any kind can be made to any member of congress by any other person or corporation, and the District of Columbia shall not be considered a state. 

In response to the decisions by the US Supreme Court in Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, the People say that those decisions were wrong, are wholly rejected, and retroactively to the date of the Citizens United decision corporations are neither people nor human, and shall not be considered as such under any law, Constitutional provision or judicial decision.

No Federal or state government may expend any cash or credit of the United States or any of the several states to directly or indirectly fund any military force or the procurement of any materials that are not required to actually defend any part of the United States or any Territory thereof from an attack or invasion by foreign forces. If there is no actual attack or invasion, or imminent threat of attack or invasion of US borders by foreign forces, with imminent to mean more likely than not within twelve months, by physical, electronic or cyber forces, then no expenditure shall be made. No US citizen or assembly of US citizens, no matter where they are located, shall be considered a foreign force.

Terrorism is a tactic and not a sovereign nation or territory. From the effective date of this amendment Congress shall pass no law nor fund any action to conduct a war on terror, terrorists or terrorism.

No American citizen shall be deprived of any Constitutionally protected right. There are no exceptions to this clause. Violations of this clause by any government or police agent shall be considered acts of treason punishable by imprisonment and fines.

No person may be executed as a penalty for the commission of any crime. 

No US military force may be directly or indirectly funded, equipped, located or stationed, temporarily or otherwise, outside the United States or its territories and within the borders of any sovereign nation or territory unless it is during the conduct of a war on a sovereign nation that was declared by the President and approved by a 2/3 majority of both the House of Representatives and the senate. There are no exceptions to this clause.

A fella can dream of a Constitutional convention...

Freedom is free, but you have to take it.

Happy Fourth of July! That's what we say to each other in the US today. We cheerfully mouth the words without thinking too much of another holiday. We think more about fireworks and barbeques than we do about the Revolutionaries that recaptured their lives from an oppressive British monarchy 270 years ago. This morning I was mowing my lawn, thinking of how I was not free from yard work. It struck me then that we are not free unless we forcibly take our freedom from whomever or whatever holds it. Our liberty cannot be bought on any level. It has no price. Freedom is what we are born to. No matter where we are, in which country, under which regime. A person cannot purchase it. If it has to be bought, then someone other than the buyer controls it. It isn't really freedom. That is because if one pays for liberty then the seller can always change the terms, or cancel the transaction. In the US many workers grind away for fifty weeks a year for two weeks of vacation time. For many that vacation is paid. But even then they are not free. Many work on those vacations, working during the supposed "paid time off." Even if they don't work a lick over their vacation, they are bound to return to their labor and their bills. When a person is free they are not bound to return to any state of being, good or bad. There is no elasticity in the conditions of a free person's life. That free man may turn to any direction and go without being limited by the anchors of unwanted commitment. Being committed to what you want is not the opposite of being free, it is the epitome of freedom. Freedom to chose and to direct your own life. Again, this freedom cannot be bought. It has to be taken and jealously guarded. It is a state of mind that allows one to say no to any limit or preconception. I did not want to say that someone who works for another cannot be free, but I think I must. True, a worker can be happy at their job, and love their coworkers, but they are always a servant in a master-servant relationship. It matters not how much they are paid, they are still at the beck, call and demand of another. Their lives can be turned upside down by a downsizing or new and less favorable supervisor. Is that free? Happiness and freedom go hand in hand. In bondage can anyone ever be happy? If freedom and happiness are equal, and money can't buy happiness, then it must be true that freedom can not be bought with money either. Take control of your comings and goings. Don't be at the mercy of another. Don't be a slave to debt for things that you do not need. Don't fear what your boss might say. Shed your bonds and do what makes you happy, because being happy is the same as being free.