We need to amend the Constitution to strike pardon power and give the Congress the power to pass property taxes (aka wealth taxes) and regulate donations to campaigns, candidates, parties and partisan causes.
We also need law establishing mandatory retirement for Congressmen and judges, including justices, and a system where each President appoints (with Senate consent) one and only one justice to SCOTUS. Finally, yes, pass McCain-Feingold, pass a SCOTUS ethics bill and make corruption charges easier to bring.
This is an observation about the world in general, not U.S. politics specifically. Prosecuting elected officials basically means that you trust the bureaucracy more than voters. This has not proven to be a successful approach.
We have been very lucky in the U.S. to avoid these problems. And it's not because nobody before Trump ever did anything rising to the level of paying off a porn star and calling it "legal expenses." It's because we have had a taboo against prosecuting politicians.
You can't police that. The only thing you can reliably do is allocate power. If you allocate power to prosecutors to prosecute elected officials, you've basically handed them the power to decide who people are allowed to vote for. This power gets abused in virtually every country where it's normalized.
The safeguards within the justice system are appropriate for prosecuting individuals. They are not set up to handle matters of national importance that could way the direction of the country or deprive tens of millions of voters of their preferred candidate.
If you don't believe that, then consider a hypothetical system where we allow prosecutions according to the standard you propose. Except only Texas courts and prosecutors have jurisdiction.
> If you allocate power to prosecutors to prosecute elected officials, you've basically handed them the power to decide who people are allowed to vote for
Of course not. You’ve given them the power to present a case to a court.
> consider a hypothetical system where we allow prosecutions according to the standard you propose
> Of course not. You’ve given them the power to present a case to a court.
Courts are designed to make decisions about individual cases, not ones that affect the trajectory of the whole country. It’s simply the wrong tool for the job.
> Literally the current DoJ and FBI
Not even close. I don’t think you can even find a prosecutor’s office and jury pool that’s as red as the DOJ and DC jury pool. AOC’s district is MAGA by comparison at 33% Trump voters.
The DOJ has thousands of lawyers, almost all of whom are are the most ideological kind of democrats.[1] Law is a very specialized field that attracts a very narrow, highly unrepresentative slice of the population. Normally this is fine because the DOJ’s work doesn’t have much of a political valance.
[1] Every DOJ person I know is a great lawyer, phenomenal at their job, and the most upstanding, orderly, conscientious type of American. But they can’t be trusted with that much power over politics. It’s like how you can’t give the One Ring to Gandalf. You have to give it to the Hobbits.
As expected, you ignore the actual complaint and just draw specious comparisons, making unsubstantiated claims that "most" of the people at the DoJ are totally democrats, trust me dude.
The alternative being that a criminal can have perma-immunity by simply running for office or getting elected?
> They are not set up to handle matters of national importance that could way the direction of the country or deprive tens of millions of voters of their preferred candidate.
Right, they're set up to ascertain guilt of a crime. Why is it or should it be their concern if people want to vote for that person or if that person has political aspirations?
You're advocating for criminal law to simply not apply to some people. That is fucking insane.
> 1) An 18-year (9*2) term is more compatible with age limits than a 36-year term
2) Each Senate class gets to participate in the appointment of one justice
I like No. 1.
No. 2 seems overcomplicated compared with staggering retirements in the way Art. 1 § 3 cl. 2 staggers the Senate. The Senate is also more diverse than the Presidency; limiting the latter would check against some dirty tricks.
This has historically done nothing for corruption and everything for one-party rule.