Calmes: The Jan. 6 committee did the country proud but it hasn’t changed our calcified politics.
Jan. 5, 2012, 11:13 p.m.
The last time I checked, calcified politics was all very well (and not all for the worse) but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, I’m afraid.
One of their questions on the last question from Janssen was, “Does the Constitution limit the Senate to a maximum of two terms and limit the House of Representatives to a maximum of one term?”
If it did, then wouldn’t it (and the other two branches) be constrained (by law) to not vote more than once per election cycle?
No.
By all means, they should get in and vote more than once. They shouldn’t ask anyone that.
But the constitution does not limit them. And neither of the first two guys on the ballot this fall say they want to limit the upper house to one term or the lower house to two terms.
They don’t say they want to change the constitution in any way that would limit them. And the Constitution says nothing whatsoever about limiting the Upper house to two terms and the Lower house to one term.
This is not calcified politics. This is a simple matter of simple common sense.
What this is about is how they are trying to influence the outcome of a presidential election with a very small group of people in a very small group of districts.
The Constitution simply doesn’t limit the number of Representatives and the number of Senators we can have.
Calcified politics do all they can to try and influence the outcome of elections – they’ve done that since the Civil War.
Calcified politics don’t help you make better choices. But they do try to restrict choices.
Calcified politics don’t make decisions any easier. But they