The Members Of The House And Senate Won’t Do It So It Will Have To Be Done Through The State Legislative Route

THERE ARE TOO MANY members of Congress who want to stay in office well into their dotage and senility and to the final, last gasp of breath at the age of 110 for them to ever move the Constitutional Amendment that would correct the idiotic neglect of the late 18th century framers to put one at that end of life even as they put one at the other end of life.   There must be an upper age limit on holding office. 

 We need to make sure an RBG or a Mitch McConnell or Diane Feinstein doesn’t hold on to office at an age and level of disability that makes them a danger to American democracy.   

For every very aged member of the Court or Congress or president you can name,  whether a John Paul Stevens or a Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, who were good in office, there are scores of others who should have been retired as soon as they hit sixty.   

No office holder has a right to hold office,  The People, all of us, have a right to EVERY MEMBER OF THE CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT, THE SUPREME COURT, being fully competent and healthy enough to do the job.  Whether of our own state or of any other state - they can all screw us over.  It is absurd to think that the holders of those jobs are allowed to hold onto the job when they are obviously unfit to do it barely conscious or barely alive.   Like the absurdity of the Supreme Court being the only level of courts without any real ethical inhibitions to their corruption it is absurd that there is no safe guard over an unfit person holding any of those jobs.*

But there are lots of members of state legislatures and governors of the various states who would like to run for an empty seat.  They could start the process without the Congress having a say in it:

Article V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

I don’t have the fear of a Constitutional Convention that a lot of people do because I don’t think it’s going to be possible to avoid one if we are to abolish the Roberts Court’s fascist Trump v USA ruling.  And if we don't do that American democracy is already fucked. 

And when we address that we should address the out of control Supreme Court by abolishing the Marbury power grab explicitly in the Constitution.   That would not be necessary if a Democratic Congress and President, acting in concert, declared that the Marbury power was illegitimate from the start, as Jefferson, Lincoln and many others said it was and that from now on the Court declaring duly adopted federal law unconstitutional is illegitimate.   If you want to see how to deal with the results of that you could look at how literally every other modern democracy deals with that state of things because the U.S. Supreme Court is the only one that has suckered the elected branches into going along with that unconstitutional power-grab. 

Get rid of the Electoral College while you’re at it.  I fully support the adoption of the compact among the states effectively nullifying it but I have absolutely no confidence that that would survive the goddamned Supreme Court when the fascists bring up the case.   

No hard fought, dangerous, costly, decades long and even deadly struggle for justice in American history has been safe from the Supreme Court.   It has nullified voting rights and civil rights acts twice, in the 19th and 21st centuries and even anti-lynching laws.   We the People need to be protected FROM THE SUPREME COURT.  And we can’t eternally avoid doing that. 

* The claim that impeachment takes care of that is and has been a lie ever since the Senate failed to remove Samuel Chase from the Supreme Court in 1804.    Impeachment is one of the most absurd features of the Constitution which has totally failed every time it was tried for those above the inferior court level of government.