As
I have said before our nascent democracy is in serious danger.
Separation
of powers (and other constitutional concepts) is under attack. Most
recently by the GOP Senate refusing to consider Obama’s nomination
of Merrick Garland to sit on SCOTUS after
Antonin Scalia died in
February of last year. That nomination died when the 114th
Congress adjourned sine die.
Now of course the Democrats in the Senate are proposing to pay the
GOP majority back by refusing to confirm any Trump attempt to fill
the Scalia vacancy. Now
Republic suffers from the childish antics of both parties. Their
excuse for this constitutional outrage and massive dereliction of
their own duty was that Obama had less than a year remaining in
office and therefore he should forfeit his presidential power and
I might add, his duty to
nominate and appoint officers of his government for his remaining
time in office because of the timing of Scalia’s death. That was
one lousy syllogism. But that didn’t keep them from standing up
and loudly proclaiming that they wouldn’t consider any judicial
nominations the President might put forward.
This
was effectively a partial coup and it was without question a
violation of both the Senate’s obligation to “advise and
consent” and its concomitant obligation to advise and not consent
to Judge Garland’s nomination. This was an absolute abdication of
its duties under the Constitution and effectively cut the
President’s term almost a year prior to its natural termination on
January 20th
of this year. By acting in this way the GOP has increased the chances
the Nation will have a judicial system that ultimately will speak out
of both sides of its mouth depending on which side was the prevailing
party in the Circuit.
This
past year’s presidential election’s outcome was determined by an
archaic system of election that the founders created in order to
allegedly prevent mobs from taking over the office and certainly to
further insulate the institution of slavery from being upended by
their greatest fear: slave rebellions. Their fear of common
un-propertied white men
voting or at
the helm of the ship of state was exceeded only their fear of slaves
rebelling against their masters and bringing down the entire
agricultural economy then in place. Now as
Donald Trump serial liar prepares to take office and wreak havoc on
the Republic we are seeing how
that system isolates the office of President from its constituency
the people of the this nation. It
is absolutely past time to consign the electoral college to the trash
heap of history, along with Donald Trump.
