Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Constitution Part II
Assignment: Read Article II of the Constitution and apply questions 1, 2, and 4 from your last assignment to Article II. Answer these questions using your notes, background knowledge, and the document itself in your response. Additionally, I wanted to provide you with an additional opportunity to discuss the material we went over in class today, so for the next two nights (Tuesday and Wednesday), the blog will be open for your comments. For the sake of focus, please refrain from writing responses containing more than 150 words. The more, the merrier!!
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11 comments:
Seeing that I'm the first one, I will just briefly discuss my ideas. Artlce II addresses the flaws that existed in the Articles of Confederation by clearly outlining the duties of the executive branch. Also mentioned here is the idea of checks and balances, where the president has a large amount of power, but the legislative branch keeps him controlled. One example is in Section 2, where it says that the president can make Treaties, however, it requires a two-thirds Senate vote. In the last section, impeachment is mentioned. It says that Congress can impeach a member of the executive branch for treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Lastly, this article reaffirms the idea of a strong centralized government. In Section 1, the debate over state power is addressed, granting states the right to elect a number of Electors.
Like evan i can clearly see that this article is related to the executive branch. Initially by establishing the electoral college, which gives every state a say in the national government. One thing i found interesting is that the president is clearly given a legal favor in the Constitution. He (or she) would be removed from office if convicted of treason, bribery, other high crimes or misdemeanors. Although those contain a very good amount of breakable laws I dont know that I like the idea of letting our president off without punishment, if anything I expect him to be held to a higher standard and set an example for the country.
I think the president still has to go through a trial and all the other reprecussions for commiting a felony that any other citizen does. The Constitution merely makes it clear that once the president commits a crime, he can and shall be removed from office. I found it interesting that in Section 1 of Article II the Constitution claims that:“In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President” it says that the once the president leaves office for whatever reason the VP takes over, but it doesn't specify whether the Vice president is temporarily suppose to take power or if it is a permanent succession.
I think that they word it in that way because anytime that the president is unable to preform their duties then it's the vice president's job to take over for them until they are capable of doing their job. For example if the president has to have surgery and is under anastasia then the vice president will be the acting president until the surgery is over and the president is able to work again. So, that part would apply not only in the case of impeachment, but also anytime the president is temporarily unable to do their job.
This section of the Constitution regards the executive branch as the first regarded congress. This fixes many issues associated with the Articles of Confederation through more centralized power and a system of checks and balances. What I found interesting was the way the electoral college works. It is an arbitrary system through which one vote does not really matter in the long run. That's sort of a depressing notion.
That's an extremely depressing notion kyle. The fact that this is the United States of America with the slogan that its the peoples' nation, and the people really don't even get the choice in who leads them. If anyone read one of the articles in the new york times week in review this week there was an entire article about the electoral college. Unfortunatly with the state of our nation we cant fix the electoral college, and also if you were to read the article youd begin to think about the things from our constiution that need to be changed and ammended to our new generation. The constution was written with wiggle room for the future, but after reading these sections there appear to be many ideas and rules that seem obselete in comparison to our world today.
To respond to chris's statement about wanting the president to receive more punishment than just being impeached, I think that the sheer mortification they'd go through would be enough to punish them. I mean, when a President is ridiculed to the extent that 2/3 of the Senate agree to remove him from office, they undergo the highest form of embarrassment. It also just occurred to me that if someone attempted to imprison the President of the United States, they wouldn't be all that successful. The President would, at worst, wind up in a beautiful mansion of a "jail" (think Martha Stewart).
And as far as my ideas on Article II go, it's purpose is to outline the powers and duties of the executive branch.
Kyle you're definately right about how arbitrary the electoral sytem is. I have to stay on topic so I'll tell everyone my very good and relevant story tomorrow in class.
I think that now that we use the running-mate system instead of the voting for a VP system we should change the rule about the VP taking over if the president dies. Since the system was changed, there have been ulterior motives for chusing (haha) who the VP nominees are. For example, how many electoral votes their state has, personal biases (don't everyone attack me for this) like Obama not choosing Hillary, and "vote-fishing" (and again...) like McCain choosing Palin.
Article II of the constitution introduces the executive branch, unlike the Articles of Confederation which only had one unicameral legislative branch. The executive power was the strong centralized power that unified the 13 states.
What I thought was interesting and new was that with the introduction of an executive branch, there's a mature way to get the president to leave.: I understand impeachment isn't kicking somebody out, but that's my point - there won't be any "overthrowing" of a leader. America would be able to have a peaceful transition of presidents from opposing parties.
I'm not clear about the directions of the comments, I thought we were supposed to comment on what we discussed in class, which was Article I? Correct? But since everyone else commented on Article II I guess I'll do the same:
I agree with Kyle, the Electoral College works. I happen to like the fact that aspiring Presidential candidates need to campaign in Ohio, and New Mexico. If we abandoned the Electoral College, candidates would campaign in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta, and that’s pretty much it. And their views would affect the rest of the country. I personally thought the Electoral College aspect of Article II was very interesting/effective. The Electoral Colleges puts a cap on the effectiveness of fraud. The most anyone can do now, no matter how corrupt they are, is flip one state. Moreover, most times it’s not even worth the effort. Breaking the Electoral College is dissolution of the very principals, which made us the United States. Smaller states made an agreement to join the ‘new’ American government based upon equal representation of each territory/state. If anyone should back out of the agreement, it makes null and void the very tenets of the agreement, which brought us together. It would be as if the fools who saw to this plan would be telling states to secede. Likewise a popular vote would produce candidates only from highly populated states.
Some people, might disagree with me : Some might say that the Electoral College is unconstitutional/undemocratic because it does not allow the right to vote (sort of but not 100%). What is your opinion?
Amy
I love how we all stopped posting when we found out it was optional. :)
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