House of Representatives Should Have 10,000 Members

The United States Constitution does not require states to be sliced up into congressional districts, which are by their very nature undemocratic.  Consequently, most states are divided into gerrymandered districts every ten years, following each census.

Fat chance, though, of getting rid of gerrymandering!  Both parties benefit from gerrymandering and are afraid to abolish congressional districts because the "ins" benefit from gerrymandering and the "outs" know that they will benefit when they take power.

Nor does the Constitution mandate 435 members of the House--that is also unconstitutional.

Article I Section 2 states: "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative."  

In 1911, Congress passed Public Law 62-5, which limited the size of the House of Representatives to 435 members.  Congress can change the number of members of the House at any time.

With a 2010 population of 308 million, that comes to one Member of the House of Representatives for every 710,767 people! 

That is outrageously unconstitutional!  

I propose to abolish all congressional districts and elect all the Members of the House at large, from each state.  Furthermore, I propose returning to the Founding Fathers' formula for the House.

If we applied the constitutional formula, after the 2010 census the House of Representatives would now have around 10,000 members today. 

What's wrong with that?  

Congress could simply construct a new building for the House of Representaties the way the Chinese did.  Their Great Hall of the People [see below], opened in 1959, can simultaneously seat 10,000 representatives.  If the Chinese can do it, so can we.

Egypt's Next 30-year Military Dictator?

From the Washington Post, August 7, 2013: 

Source: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

CAIRO — He is a savvy operator, people who have worked with him say, a career military officer who methodically campaigned a year ago to become Egypt’s defense minister under its first democratically elected president.

Now Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi is faced with a society even more bitterly divided than it was a year ago, when Mohamed Morsi took office as president.

Egyptian officials say that Sissi’s commitment to returning the country to civilian-led democracy is genuine and that they do not think that he will run in elections, expected to be held next year.

But in a country where the only leader in six decades not to have a military background was just deposed in a coup, many say they would not be surprised if the charismatic Sissi decided to throw his high-brimmed officer’s hat into the ring. Some supporters are hailing him as a new Gamal Abdel Nasser, the revered general who led the 1952 coup that overthrew Egypt’s monarchy.

“I think it’s hugely tempting for anyone,” said a high-ranking Western official, referring to the possibility that Sissi might take his popularity to the polls. Full text of article.

Jagor's comment:

You see?  After a momentary interruption--the "Arab Spring," Mubarak's resignation and the 51.7% election victory of Mohamed Morsi, whose Freedom and Justice [Muslim Brotherhood] party had repeatedly stated publicly that they would never run a candidate for the president--Egypt is finally going to get back to normal, i.e. a military dictatorship, as has been the case since King Farouk was overthrown by a similar military coup d'état on July 23, 1952.

Let's see if Sissi can beat Mubarak's record of 30 years in office before he gets kicked out!

As the French say, "Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose."

French parties call for Snowden political asylum

France 24 reported on July 1, 2013, in a news item headlined French parties call for Snowden political asylum, that the leaders of both the left-wing Parti de Gauche and the the right-wing National Front, as well as the leader of the Green Party, have all demanded that President François Hollande grant political asylum to whistleblower Edward Snowden without delay. 

This must be the first time in recorded history that both the left and right wing parties in France have agreed on anything: most of the time they're biting each others' heads off.  And the Greens are on board, too, for good measure.

As right-wing leader Marine Le Pen said, "If we don’t give this man political asylum, what use does political asylum serve?”  And left-wing leader Jean-Juc Melanchon said, "It is not acceptable that we allow a situation whereby he wanders uncertainly around the planet. He is a defender of all our freedoms.”  The Green Party issued a statement that, "France must give this whistle blower and defender of freedom political asylum without delay.”

Of course, if France did offer Snowden asylum, we'd probably go back to freedom fries and dumping cases of Beaujolais down the sewers the way it was when President Jacques Chirac stood up to George W. Bush and told him that France wouldn't join Bush's British lapdog Tony Blair and participate in the illegal Cheney-Bush invasion and occupation of Iraq. 

In sad retrospect, we know that, unlike Bush and Cheney's coterie of ignorant neocon ideologues [see Jagoriade post dated March 21, 2013, "War Criminals Still at Large," below], Chirac actually understood the Middle East and got things right.  

But it's doubtful that François Hollande has the guts that Chirac had.

Republican Smear Tactics Fail to Damage Obama

You can see how the Republicans smear artists are making the same mistake with President Obama they made with Bill Clinton. In Clinton's case, a handful of renegades and reprobates, spearheaded by Texas Congressman Tom De Lay, brought the United States government to a standstill as they impeached and attempted to convict the president because of a semen spot on a dress.  [Just in case you were wondering, on November 24, 2010, Tom DeLay was found guilty of conspiracy to commit money laundering and making an illegal contribution; he was sentenced to three years in prison and 10 years probation on January 10, 2011.]

This Gallup poll, reproduced above, shows that the more the Republicans attacked Clinton, the more popular he became with the American people!   The Republicans' smears totally backfired!   In fact, if the Constitution had allowed Clinton to run for a third term, he would have been reelected in a landslide.   And, even if he could run in 2016, he'd still most likely be elected.

It's the same thing now with Obama. You've got a handful of GOP reprobates and renegades smearing the president on a daily basis.  Some of them, like the hysterical Minnesota Republican Michelle Bachmann, following in the footsteps of Tom De Lay, are starting to demand the president's impeachment.

But, just as with Clinton, the Republicans' smears have had absolutely no effect on President Obama's approval rating.

The Republicans have learned nothing; that's why they're continuing to self-destruct. Even when billionaires like the nefarious Koch Brothers, masterminded by Karl Rove, squandered hundreds of millions of dollars trying to defeat Obama, he still won by a landslide in the Electoral College by a vote of 332 to 206.

The plain truth is that the American people are far more interested in Jodi Arias than they are in Benghazi [Where the heck's Benghazi?], the IRS [Everybody hates the IRS; what else is new?] or the AP. [What's the AP?]

War Criminals Still at Large

From Bill Bonner's blog, Diary of a Rogue Economist:

When the Romans built a bridge, the architect would have to stand under it when the scaffolding was removed. If he did his work badly, the bridge fell down and he was killed.

We'd like to see some feet poking out of the rubble of the Iraq War. Is that too much to ask? Rumsfeld. Bush. Cheney. And all the jackasses in Congress who went along with it. Of course. But how about these war criminals too:

Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, Eliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, William Kristol, Frank Gaffney Jr. They said our troops would be "greeted like liberators." They claimed the war would "pay for itself" with Iraqi oil.

And let's not forget Thomas L. Friedman. He said an invasion of Iraq would be one of the great "revolutionizing" events of history... and that American GIs weren't really fighting men, but were "nurturing" a great new democracy.

Surely there is some corner of Hell, dark and hot, reserved for these intellectual miscreants. The sooner they get there the safer we will all be.

Full text of article. 

Jagor's comment:  

If they can have an International Criminal Court in The Hague for a handful of hapless African thugs and a couple of sorry Slavs, why can't they set up a court to try some real  criminals--Bush, Cheney and their Dirty Dozen--for war crimes and crimes against humanity?  

Inquiring minds want to know.