[Campaigns-l] Congressional Term Limits

Tue Jul 11 00:45:38 UTC 2006

Interesting that they chose to do that, as I was going to suggest the following:
Term limits are already in place for President (2 terms [8 years] or 10 years).
Senators should also have a limit of 2 terms (12 years) or 15 years.
Representatives should have a limit of 8 terms (16 years) or 17 years.

The theory is, the less area a politician has to represent, the more
(s)he knows about the people living there, and the more the people
living there know about him/her. That's why the term limits increase
as the area gets smaller. And the extra years at the end include an
extra half of a term, following the example of President.

Thoughts?

On 7/8/06, Dean Poirier <mtoliveman2002 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> However, you must first contend with roadblocks such
> as, U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995). In that case,
> the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to strike down
> Congressional term limits enacted by the state of
> Arkansas.  In 1992, Arkansas voters amended their
> state constitution to limit the number of elections in
> which one person could run for the U.S.  Senate or
> House of Representatives.  Arkansas defended the
> measure as an exercise of its constitutional authority
> to determine the "times, places and manner" of
> elections.  Writing for a sharply divided Supreme
> Court, Justice John Paul Stevens observed that the
> Framers intended "that neither Congress nor the states
> should possess the power to supplement the exclusive
> qualifications set forth in" Article I.  Stevens
> further observed that "[a]llowing individual states to
> craft their own qualifications for Congress would ...
> erode the structure envisioned by the framers."
> Stevens was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, David
> Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
> Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the dissent, and was
> joined by Chief Justice William H.  Rehnquist and
> Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Antonin Scalia.
> Thomas maintained that "[n]othing in the Constitution
> deprives the people of each state of the power to
> prescribe eligibility requirements for candidates who
> seek to represent them in Congress....  And where the
> Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by
> the states or the people." In its majority opinion,
> the Court recognized cogent arguments on both sides of
> the term limits issue.  It concluded, however, that an
> issue of this magnitude must be referred to the formal
> process by which the Federal Constitution is amended.
> Immediately after the Thornton decision was rendered,
> supporters of term limits pledged renewed efforts to
> achieve a constitutional amendment to limit the tenure
> of members of Congress. That, of course, has not
> transpired.
>
> However, subsequent to the Supreme Court's ruling in
> Thornton, some advocates of term limits have sought to
> pressure members of Congress and state legislators to
> utilize the procedures of Article V of the U.S.
> Constitution to amend that document to impose a six
> year limit on service in the House and a twelve year
> limit on service in the Senate.
>
> --- Nelson Walker <nels96 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It is a mystery to me that, in all the new 'good
> > government' websites (like
> > wikia) that I come across, I never find any that
> > stress the fact that, in
> > order to effect REAL reform, it is necessary to have
> > a legislature made up
> > of 'citizen' legislators, rather than the current
> > crop of careerist
> > professional politicians. (
> > tenurecorrupts.com/#americasfirst )
> >
> > And to eliminate professional politicians, it is
> > necessary to change
> > politics from being a livelihood or career, to
> > merely a civic duty, where
> > one will try to change government for the better
> > during a short stay, then
> > return to private practice. That's the way it was
> > for the first 150 years of
> > our history, before the enticements of politics
> > became too good to give up.
> > ( tenurecorrupts.com/#followthemoney )
> >
> > Politics as a livelihood, or a career, is a
> > fundamental conflict of
> > interest. When you are supposed to be a
> > representative of the people,
> > putting their interest, or the country's interest
> > before your own, then you
> > cannot honestly be in a position to be concerned
> > about your job (or your
> > reelection). ( tenurecorrupts.com/#reelections )
> >
> > i come to wikia in an attempt to correct this void
> > in our ongoing dialog. I
> > strongly believe that to improve our government, we
> > must change the
> > character of our Congress, and the most direct way
> > to do that is to enact
> > Congressional Term Limits.
> >
> > Toward this end, I have for the past 2 years been
> > building
> > tenurecorrupts.com, a website dedicated to educating
> > the voting public on
> > the need for such limits. The site contains
> > arguments (pro and con),
> > amendment wording options, links to other sites,
> > suggested actions you can
> > take to help, etc. The site blog list has
> > accumulated over two dozen
> > articles on this one subject. ( Boring ?)
> >
> > Recently, it has begun offering free term limits
> > bumperstickers to all
> > comers.
> >
> > I would very much like to have the wikia crowd join
> > me in discussions to
> > exercise this idea, and to help spread the word !
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Nelson Lee Walker, Saratoga, CA
> > http://tenurecorrupts.com
> > nels96 at gmail.com   Ph:408-867-2401
> >
> > No politician should be allowed unlimited
> > reelections... even if he has the
> > votes!
> > Remember..TENURE CORRUPTS!
> > > _______________________________________________
> > Campaigns-l mailing list
> > Campaigns-l at wikia.com
> > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/campaigns-l
> >
>
>
> Dean R. Poirier
>
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-- 
Gordon P. Hemsley
gphemsley at gmail.com
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