Should One-half of One Percent of the Nation’s Population Control the Country?

By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)

June 1, 2005

By the time most of you read this article, I will be on an airplane flying to New York City to attend Book Expo America where my books entitled A Hunger for Liberty Leads to the Declaration of Independence and The Threat of Anarchy Leads to the Constitution are being introduced. I have spent more than two years on the research for these books, reading a couple of thousand of George Washington’s letters, a good portion of the records of debates in the Continental Congress in 1776 and the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

If I could, I would give the first copies printed to every U.S. Senator so they could actually READ what those documents say, instead of making absurd statements on the floor of the Senate as they debate the “right” of a minority to obstruct President Bush’s nominations for the judiciary and ambassador to the United Nations.

For example, on the Senate floor on May 23rd, Senator Tom Harkin, (D-Iowa) said of the agreement between seven Democrat and seven Republican senators that was supposed to prevent a change in senate rules to stop the obstruction of Senate votes on President Bush’s nominees:

“I am very pleased to hear about the bipartisan agreement that preserves minority rights in the Senate that preserves the right of the minority to extended debate that preserves the checks and balances that our Founding Fathers prized so highly.

“My hope now is that after weeks of distraction, after weeks during which the majority leader threatened the nuclear option, to sort of blow up the Senate, now we hopefully can return to the people's business.”

There is absolutely NOTHING in the Constitution of the United States that guarantees the right of minority rule in the Senate to override the vote of the people in choosing the President. The Senate, which was somewhat patterned after Britain’s House of Lords, was designed as a compromise to give each of the STATES in the union a voice in the Federal government, because the small states feared being outvoted if the Senate were a representative body.

This was changed by the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913 to allow the people of each state, rather than the legislatures of each state to choose their senators.

The agreement Senator Harkin praised crashed and burned a mere 3 days later on May 26th when Democrats blocked a vote by the Senate on the nomination of John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations.

In that debate Senator Joseph Biden, one of Delaware’s 2 Democrat Senators said

“The Constitution says that the Senate shall advise and consent to nominations. The appointments clause does not limit the Senate's power to review nominations to those matters the executive branch deems relevant.

“Our Founding Fathers designed a system of checks and balances, not a system of blank checks. “We must defend the Senate's constitutional powers, however, or we shall surely lose them.”

Again, the Constitution does NOT give the Senate ANY authority to require the President to give them presidential or executive department files, which is what the Democrats have demanded. In the vote on May 26, the vote to bring the nomination of John Bolton to a vote in the Senate was 56 to 42, with two senators present but not voting. In other words, the super majority of 60 needed under current Senate rules failed by 4 votes.

Both Senators Joseph Biden and Thomas Carper from the state of Delaware, (Population 830,364) and both senators from the State of Vermont, (Population 621,394) Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy and Independent Jim Jeffords voted to keep the entire senate from being allowed to vote on the nomination of John Bolton by President Bush. The Constitution states in Article II Clause 2: the President “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States.”

Note it says “Advice and Consent of the Senate –“which means the Senate has to vote on the matter. What is occurring and HAS occurred since President Bush was elected in 2000 is that the Senate has not been allowed to VOTE on many of his appointees – because the minority knows they would be approved.

US Census estimate for the year 2004 showed a total population for the country to be 293,655,404. The total population of Delaware and Vermont is 1,451,758, or one-half of one percent of the US population.

There is absolutely NOTHING in the Constitution of the United States that allows the majority of the nation to be controlled by one-half of one percent of the nation’s population. It is outmoded Senate rules, not the Constitution that allows this kind of dictatorial obstruction. The Senate could change its rules monthly if they wanted to.

So, we might say, on May 26, 2005 less than one half of one percent of the population of the United States of America prevented representatives of the remaining 99.5% of the US population from voting on the President’s nominee for ambassador to the UN, as called for in the Constitution.

What has developed, now that the Democrats seem to realize they can’t win at the voting booth, is a constitutional crisis as a minority moves to block policies the voters wanted implemented when they voted for President Bush and for a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

This has led to a dictatorial, unconstitutional seizure of power by a minority in the Senate that is determined to keep the president from being able to choose judges or executive appointees who can implement policies he told the voters he would implement.

It’s time for the people to speak up and defend their rights to choose their form of government.