New amendments

Having recently read through Melissa Murray's excellent The US Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader, I've found myself considering the need for reforms. Post-Trump reforms, I mean, as it's been made crystal clear by the largely unchecked criminality and corruption of Felon47 and his regime that solid protections against corruption and politically-based jurisprudence don't exist. Or rather, to the extent that they do exist, they depend on a Congressional membership that is not itself corrupt and willing to throw away its collective oath of office.

Assuming we survive the current presidential term as a nation governed by the US Constitution—by no means a sure thing, and something very much dependent on the upcoming midterm elections and the integrity thereof—we need to do what we failed to do in 2021-2024 and enact reforms to safeguard against the sort of destruction and sabotage being inflicted on the United States right now by its own president, aided and abetted by a compliant Congress.

I don't know precisely what these reforms should be, but it does appear that the most effective, most ironclad way to achieve them would be amending the Constitution. That is, of course, a high bar to clear, but I think it's necessary.

So, though I remain uncertain as to what these amendments should be, I have been workshopping a couple in my head and present them here for comment and revision. What do you all think? What's missing? What's overreach? What would be better?

Here goes.

XXVIII is obviously the attempt at an anti-corruption amendment. The emoluments clause of Article II, which states that the President will be paid a salary and "shall not receive within [the term of office] any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them," of course already exists and in general has been enough from presidents one through forty-four and forty-six. But since the emoluments clause uses relatively obscure language (when's the last time you heard the word "emolument" in a context outside of the Constitution?), and since it likely would be interpreted by the Supreme Court as only applying to money coming directly from the federal or state treasuries, we now see that the clause is vastly insufficient.

Felon47 seems to have become belatedly aware of the emoluments clause with his attempted shakedown of the IRS; having been apparently convinced that him suing the IRS for $10B would not work, he pivoted to using the suit as a vehicle to create the slush fund recently announced as a "settlement" of the lawsuit (not a settlement, lawsuit is no more, this is a legally separate thing); then the slush fund had to be reconfigured to fit into an existing "settlement fund" structure with meaningless language saying Felon47 himself would not receive any money even though the loopholes around that are parsecs wide. But most of Felon47’s grift and theft and other corruption has been via the stock market, conning his supporters, cryptocurrency scams, manipulation of government contracts to suit his portfolio, and so on, things that don't come directly from the government treasury. Things that are also largely illegal already, but given that this Supreme Court has decreed that the president can commit crime at will so long as its cloaked in "official action"—and since, even absent that ruling, waiting until a president leaves office to prosecute him for crimes opens a huge window for destruction in the meantime—solidifying the prohibitions in the Constitution is more than appropriate.

XXIX is a more of a work in progress. Clearly, there needs to be some sort of enforcement mechanism for the Supreme Court as there are currently between two and six, depending on your metric, outright corrupt and/or politically driven and/or anti-Constitutional Justices on the bench. The problem is in what form that mechanism should take, and I don't have a clear idea for that. An oversight/ethical review commission seems like a good idea, but maybe it isn't? Maybe it is but isn't enough? Punitive power over the Court rests exclusively with Congress and I don't think we can change that; maybe there's a method of creating some enforcement entity that I haven't thought of, but so far I'm at a loss for anything other than an advisory commission.

I'm not sure I like the idea of imposing term limits on Justices, so I didn't include that. I don't like the concept of term limits generally, but in other cases they apply to elected officials that face being voted out at regular intervals. With the Court there's only impeachment, retirement, or death to remove a Justice. Lifetime appointments theoretically prevent Justices from being vulnerable to political pressures, which is good, but the "job security," if you will, appears, with this crowd anyway, to invite other corruptions. So I'm open to the concept, but it doesn't sit well as a solution to anything.

What's interesting to me as a starting point is the language of Article III establishing the Court, which states that "Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour." So we need a standard, or at least a barometer, for "good behavior" and a clarification that if Justices are not evidencing "good behavior" then they can no longer hold their offices.

I don't know if this is a practical train of thought at all right now; I mean, we have to survive the current regime first, or at least retake a commanding majority of Congress, before anything like this can even be put in motion, so there may be more pressing areas to focus on. But assuming we do make it through to the other side, being ready to go with reform is a good idea. Why not work out the details now?