After 250 good years, now is not the time for major changes

September 22, 2026

We are living in a time of rage. The outlook of so many people is one of anger, and impatience with things they disagree with, instead of understanding and accepting that it is okay that not everyone thinks alike. It’s been a long time since we have seen this level of anger.

It is quite disturbing to observe so many Americans being so adamant about changing our system of government and amending or destroying the U.S. Constitution. 

Maybe they just dislike some aspects of the system. Or, maybe they do not understand how this unique and wonderful system of government came to be, and why it has worked so well for 250 years. 

Today, the left has a long list of radical changes they want to make and things to eliminate. 

One thing on their list is the United States Supreme Court, which they want to pack with “friendly” justices that will vote their way on legal or constitutional matters. Some of them would rather eliminate it completely.

There is a very sensible reason for our Constitution and our body of laws. The Constitution controls how the government operates, and the laws protect its citizens. But the left does not want a system of government and a body of laws designed to be followed as created.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder thinks packing the Court should be a priority. Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren says the Court is illegitimate because it does not follow “widely held public opinion,” It doesn’t. And it shouldn’t.

And, former Rep. Eric Swalwell agreed with Warren, saying the Court “defies the will of the people.” And that is correct, because that is not its purpose.

The popular New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wonders why we have a Supreme Court, asking, “How much does the current structure benefit us? … I don’t think it does.”

And, if those perspectives are not enough, the court-packing faction thinks it will make the Court “less partisan.” Seriously? And, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg wants the Court to have 15 justices consisting of five from each party, who will then select the remaining five.

Law Professor Jonathan Turley explains that a “non-partisan, independent judiciary,” such as what we have, “serves two essential purposes: it plays a vital role in preserving the separation of powers, which prevents all government power from being concentrated in one place, and it stands as a bulwark in defense of minority rights against a majority faction. To ensure its ability to perform these essential roles without being threatened by the political branches — the Congress and the executive branch — the Constitution gives federal jurists life tenure and salary protections.”

Another of the changes they want to make is to abolish the Electoral College.

The United States of America is by design not a pure democracy, where the majority always rules. A good example of why a pure democracy isn’t a good idea is this: In a pure democracy, in a group of twenty people, eleven can rule that the nine must go to jail.

Under such a design, a few large states would decide every presidential election, easily dominating the smaller states. 

Different states and areas of the country have different ideas about things, like what is good for them, and what is not good. But what is better for giant states like New York and California, may be very bad for others, like Vermont and Wyoming.

The Federalist Papers noted that there are 43 states with a smaller population than Los Angeles County, CA, meaning that the votes of each of those 43 states is less than one county in another state. If Los Angeles County was a state, it would be the 11th largest in the nation.

That’s why we have the Electoral College: so that the largest states do not always dominate and choose the president, based on the candidate that will do the most for them.

After much debate, the Founders settled on a compromise of ideas where instead of the raw vote totals of each state being added together to decide who will be president, the decision would be made by state-appointed electoral intermediaries — one for each senator and representative of each state — who would cast the actual ballots for the presidency. This tends to help balance the smaller states against the larger ones.

A lot of Americans do not like the Electoral College, and want to do away with it, because they feel it unfairly and improperly elects the president. However, in 250 years, in the 60 elections of our 47 presidents since 1789, only five times have presidential candidates won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College vote. That’s about 8 percent of the time. It doesn’t seem to be the problem they want everyone to believe it is.

You do not have to have a PhD. in The Art of Deception to realize that following the left’s plan will create a situation where the left will forever dominate elections, and will rule the country until it surpasses Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea, and dies.

Our system has worked well for 250 years. We need to keep it.

“Our democracy” works well as it was designed. Leave it alone!

October 29, 2024

The liberal faction in America has an annoying tendency to want to change everything that gets in the way of its drive for total control of the country that will last forever. 

This tendency includes such radical actions as packing the Supreme Court with liberal justices who will essentially ignore the basis for our laws and Constitution and ignore existing laws and the terms of the Constitution and substitute their political preferences, without going through required processes to make such changes.

They also would like to abolish the Senate filibuster that has played such an important part in preventing bad measures from getting easily passed in that body. 

The filibuster promotes compromise and protects the minority party’s voice and function. It also protects purposeful debate, which is the intended purpose of the Senate. And it provides a safeguard against political extremism and corporate influence.

And they want to abolish the Electoral College. Criticism of this element of the government includes that it is not a mechanism of direct democracy, or as a voice of the people, since it replaces the popular vote result with a different process. But the United States of America is not, and has never been a direct democracy. It is also called a weapon of slavery. But that has been effectively proven wrong. 

The Founders deliberately created the Electoral College as a mechanism of federalism. Federalism recognizes the states as important elements of the nation with a degree of control over what does and does not happen.

“Doing away with the Electoral College would breach our fidelity to the spirit of the Constitution, a document expressly written to thwart the excesses of majoritarianism,” in the opinion of John Samples, Vice President of the Cato Institute.

“First, we must keep in mind the likely effects of direct popular election of the president,” Samples wrote. “We would probably see elections dominated by the most populous regions of the country or by several large metropolitan areas.”

“Second, the Electoral College makes sure that the states count in presidential elections. As such, it is an important part of our federalist system — a system worth preserving. Historically, federalism is central to our grand constitutional effort to restrain power,” he wrote, “but even in our own time we have found that devolving power to the states leads to important policy innovations,” such as welfare reform.

Another opinion on the Electoral College’s importance comes from Allen Guelzo and James Hulme in, of all places, The Washington Post. “Abolishing the electoral college now might satisfy an irritated yearning for direct democracy, but it would also mean dismantling federalism. After that, there would be no sense in having a Senate (which, after all, represents the interests of the states), and further along, no sense even in having states, except as administrative departments of the central government. 

“Those who wish to abolish the electoral college ought to go the distance, and do away with the entire federal system and perhaps even retire the Constitution, since the federalism it was designed to embody would have disappeared.”

By the way, replacing the Constitution is a goal of more than a few of the political left in the country.

“Without the electoral college, there would be no effective brake on the number of ‘viable’ presidential candidates,” Guelzo and Hulme add. “Abolish it, and it would not be difficult to imagine a scenario where, in a field of a dozen micro-candidates, the ‘winner’ only needs 10 percent of the vote, and represents less than 5 percent of the electorate. And presidents elected with smaller and smaller pluralities will only aggravate the sense that an elected president is governing without a real electoral mandate.”

The number of people who do not understand the function of the Electoral College and its value to the nation is shockingly enormous. It has provided a high degree of stability in our presidential elections, and therefore must be left alone.

Guelzo and Hulme added that while the Electoral College appears to be an inefficient process to many, “the Founders were not interested in efficiency; they were interested in securing ‘the blessings of liberty.’ The Electoral College is, in the end, not a bad device for securing that.”

Recently, there has been much attention focused on and many references to “our democracy.” And there is so much finger-pointing at former President Donald Trump, and other Republicans and conservatives, accusing them of trying to harm or destroy the democracy. 

What is truly interesting, however, is how determined the liberal Democrats and Marxists are to dismantle our democratic processes piece by piece. A bright future for them is a country which they will control in perpetuity.

The references listed earlier — stacking the Supreme Court, ending the Senate filibuster, and abolishing the Electoral College — as well as making the District of Columbia and some US territories into states, are nothing more than mechanisms to alter our democratic republic, with its guarantees of personal freedom and high degree of state independence, and turn it into a direct democracy.

Converting our current very successful system into one where government has absolute control is not an improvement for the people. Only for some people.

The fundamental transformation of the United States is well underway

August 22, 2023

Way back when Barack Obama was campaigning for President of the United States he famously said, “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Years later, in an interview with then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, then-President Obama somewhat walked back his statement. But looking at what has happened between Obama’s original statement and today, it is pretty obvious that the Democrats are indeed working to fundamentally transform the country.

Democrats are increasingly comfortable attacking foundational principles and elements of American governance. Here are some of the efforts now underway.

They want to enlarge the U.S. Supreme Court by adding Democrat appointees to it. Unhappy with recent rulings, they want to add more liberal justices to the Court. 

This idea ignores the reality that the judicially conservative justices they want to put in the minority make rulings based upon existing law and constitutional principles that are understood today as when they were enacted. They are “originalists.” 

Democrats prefer instead to change these principles using a liberal majority on the Court. They want to pack it with justices who will reinterpret laws, not support them as intended.

They favor doing away with the Electoral College. One point made to support this transformation is that in a democracy, the winner of the popular vote should be President. However, as has been said here and elsewhere before, the United States is not a pure democracy; it is a republic. Thus, by design, not all decisions are to be made by 50 percent-plus-one vote.

And, only four times in the election of 46 Presidents in over 240 years has the Electoral College been in conflict with the popular vote. 

However, without the balancing of the varied interests of Americans provided by the Electoral College, every Presidential election would be decided by the big states and big cities. The rest of the country would be at their mercy. It is not what the Founders believed was best, nor is it in the best interest of all Americans for Presidents to be forever selected by a few states.

“Democrats in the Senate have introduced legislation to make Washington, DC a state, and they’re seeing overwhelming support,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote in an email. More than 40 Senators support this idea, including Virginia Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, but not West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

“Democrats know they can’t win with standard tactics,” McCaarthy wrote, “so they’re making a power play by trying to flip the game board to their advantage!” 

But here is why it can’t happen: Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides explicitly for a national capital that would not be part of a state nor treated as a state. It is a neutral district where representatives of all the states can meet on an equal footing to conduct the nation’s business. DC as a state, or any state, would carry too much power.

Federal regulations — both existing and planned — are limiting Americans’ ability to choose items they want and need, and making many things more difficult and expensive to produce.

Gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles are discouraged in favor of electric vehicles. Many household appliances that work on natural gas or other fuels are targeted for replacement, as are incandescent lightbulbs.

The massive set of federal regulations tell Americans things they can no longer do, and things they can no longer purchase. 

All of this is done under the premise of making things better. But ultimately, they increase the control that the federal government, under Democrat control, will hold over the people, and reduce our freedoms.

Biden’s failure to adequately secure the southern border, as required by the Constitution and laws, has allowed a huge increase in illegals entering the country.

“According to Customs and Border Protection, since January 2021 when Biden took the oath of office, there have been 5,118,661 encounters with illegal immigrants along the southern border,” as reported by Townhall.com. “Add to that the number of known ‘gotaways,’” which are illegal immigrants who were not apprehended.

“Through the first half of Biden's term from January 2021 through January 2023, Customs and Border Protection reported 1.2 million ‘gotaways.’”

While most of these people may be good people looking for a better life, others carry disease, are criminals or drug or child traffickers. The negative effects of illegals on cities and states is enormous, and the number of drug deaths has climbed.

Further, these illegal “residents” may eventually be given citizen status by the Democrat administration, without earning it, as in the past. This is both foolish and dangerous.

The ideas of Democrats/liberals/socialists are unable to win among all Americans on their merit. So, they want to gain control over the rest of us, and will do nearly anything to gain that position, and fundamental transformation is their number one tool.

And in the pure democracy into which they want to transform America, on a vote to end all fossil fuel uses, ban guns, limit free speech, have abortion after birth, or any wild idea, all it will take is a 50 percent-plus-one vote to accomplish that, or a Supreme Court with “law makers” instead of “law interpreters.”

About Congressional term limits, and this week’s activities

Published January 5, 2021

Twenty-eight members of the House of Representatives, past and present, held office for 36-to-39 years, 49 were in office for 40-to-49 years, and seven were in office 50 or more years, with Michigan’s John Dingle leading the pack with 59 years and 21 days in office.

Thirteen members of the Senate, past and present, held office for 36-to-39 years, with nine in office for 40-to-49 years, and one, West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd, was in office for 51 years and 176 days.

All of those people were in office after 1900, and some served in both the House and the Senate during their total tenure. Several of them are in Congress today.

The point of the preceding information is to call attention to how long they held these positions, rather than how many people have held elective positions for many years. 

It is generally accepted that a career lasts between 40 and 50 years, and it is not uncommon for people to work in different jobs during their career. Generally, people begin working in their late teens or early 20s, and retire in their mid 60s or in their 70s.

The intention of America’s Founders was for Congressional positions not to be a career, or even a large portion of a career. The country was intended to have citizen legislators who run for office and hold it for a few years, and then return to the private sector and the work they did prior to being elected. 

That way, legislators will be more in touch with the people they represent, since they have faced, and will relatively soon again face the same issues that their constituents must deal with. Having the same personal experiences as their constituents, they are well prepared to act to the benefit of the people.

Let’s look at the tenure of the leadership of the 116th Congress, which just ended.

The people currently holding leadership positions in the House of Representatives are listed with their position, their name, and the year they entered Congress: Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, 1987; Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, 1981; Majority Whip, Jim Clyburn, 1993; Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, 2007; Minority Whip, Steve Scalise, 2008.

Those currently holding leadership positions in the Senate, listed with their position, their name, and the year they entered Congress: President pro tempore, Chuck Grassley, 1981; Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, 1985; Majority Whip, John Thune, 2005; Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, 1999; Minority Whip, Dick Durbin, 1997.

The newest members of the leadership in both houses have been there at least 12 years, and those with the longest tenure have been there nearly 40 years. 

The average age of members of the House at the beginning of the 116th Congress was 57.6 years-old; of Senators, 62.9 years-old. This is perhaps somewhat of a good thing, as the older one is, the more of life he or she has experienced, and hopefully has learned from it.

In 1951, the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, setting a term limit of two four-year terms on the presidency. It is time to do the same for members of Congress.

Changing faces more frequently would introduce more new ideas to law-making, and would allow newer members to perhaps get influential positions. With shorter tenures, members may be more willing to back good proposals that are controversial.

Where to draw the lines? Term limits of 12 years would allow six two-year House terms or two six-year Senate terms, or a combination that does not exceed 12 years.

This method is very close to the average tenure of members of the 116th Congress. The average length of service for Representatives at the beginning of the 116th Congress was 8.6 years (4.3 House terms); for Senators, 10.1 years (1.7 Senate terms).

* * *

This week, two important things take place. Today, the Georgia runoff elections for two U.S. Senate seats are being held. The stakes are important: if one or both Republicans, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, hold on to the seats they now occupy, the Senate will remain under Republican control. If the Democrat challengers Raphael Warnock and John Ossof win, the Democrats and Republicans each would hold 50 seats, and the vice president would be the tie-breaker. If Democrat Kamala Harris is the VP, one party, the Democrats, will control the White House and both houses of the Congress. 

Tomorrow, the Congress meets to validate the Electoral College votes for president and vice president. Electoral votes will be tallied in a joint session of the House and the Senate, meeting in the House chamber. The president of the Senate —Vice President Mike Pence — is the presiding officer of the session.

Members of the House and Senate may file written objections to Electoral votes from any state, signed by at least one member of each house. House and Senate members will then separately debate the objection(s) and vote to approve or disapprove. If an objection is approved by both houses, the Electoral votes for that state are not accepted, and those votes are subtracted.

This procedure is not expected to change the Electoral College winners, Joe 

Biden and Kamala Harris, but it possibly could.

If you lose, improve your game; don’t change the game to suit you

What do people do when they can’t win by being better, but cannot stand to lose? The answer often is to fudge a little, or a lot, rather than to gracefully accept defeat, and try to improve.

Pitchers threw illegal spitballs to win. Some quarterbacks prefer underinflated footballs. Election officials stuff ballot boxes, encourage unregistered people to vote, or vote often, or simply report false totals.

Sometimes, those who can’t win under existing rules want to change the rules to make it easier to win, but they often choose the easier route of relying on preferable, though improper, interpretation of the rules.

Democrats once merely thought about things differently from Republicans, but worked within the existing, long-standing and sensible election system created by our Founders. Not so much these days.

What we are witnessing today is a broad coalition of people trying to silence ideas and points of view they disagree with, rather than try to win a debate against those opinions in the light of day.

We see this in the malpractice of some media outlets, both old (print media and radio/TV news providers), and new (social media etc.).

A veteran newsman, Ted Koppel, 25-year host of ABC’s “Nightline,” from 1980 to 2005, agrees that President Donald Trump is “not mistaken” when he says the major media are “out to get him.” “We are not the reservoir of objectivity that I think we were,” he told Marvin Kalb at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace earlier this month.

“We have things appearing on the front page of The New York Times right now that never would have appeared 50 years ago. Analysis, commentary on the front page,” Koppel added.

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter, frequently receive criticism from conservatives, who say they are singled out and censored. Hardly ever do liberals/progressives have this complaint. And today, if you say certain newly unpopular things, you might be charged with a crime.

College campuses, once the arena for lively and beneficial debate of ideas, both friendly ideas and otherwise, now often ban conservative speakers from campus when heated protests against them arise. Claiming safety as the reason, administrators ban these speakers. But whose safety is at risk, and safety from whom?

The conservative speakers and those who support them are at risk of violence because campus leftists cannot abide those who do not think like they do. And rather than disciplining the violent protesters and restoring order and healthy debate to the learning environment, college administrations take sides and cave in to the leftists.

Stories of political indoctrination replacing or supplementing the presentation of subject matter in schools, all the way from colleges down to elementary grades, are not uncommon, particularly at the higher education levels.

Thanks to the abandonment of professional ethics by the leftist media and leftist educators, free speech is being stamped out, replaced by an “our way is THE way” message.

Along with free speech, important historical monuments and other fundamental elements of our democratic republic are under attack. Changing inconvenient rules is gathering a significant following. Some of the Democrat presidential hopefuls have targeted the Electoral College, and some have taken aim at the Supreme Court.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), both of whom see themselves someday wearing the president’s title, are ready to chuck the Electoral College in order to earn that title.

And much of the electorate has been uneducated or mis-educated in the whys and wherefores of their country’s system of government, and have no idea why this is a bad thing. 

As a safety device – an “insurance policy,” in common parlance – they now want to stack the United States Supreme Court with more activist justices, who will focus on desired outcomes, not on constitutional and legal original meaning and intent.

This group includes Robert Francis O’Rourke (D-Texas), who calls himself by the Hispanic nickname “Beto,” to attract votes. And the previously mentioned Sens. Harris and Warren, along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) are on board with this “solution” to their electoral problems.

And if changing those rules isn’t sufficient to win elections, some also want to lower the voting age to 16, and even allow illegal aliens to vote. Claiming “voter suppression,” they complain that asking people at polling places to prove they are eligible to vote, one of the most valued rights of a United States citizen, is somehow voter suppression.

Missing the essential point, liberals/progressives say, “If the Founders were alive today, they would think differently about things than they did back then.” The point they miss or ignore, of course, is that the Founders were not speaking about specifics, but about principles in creating a unique system of government.

Never before in recent history has an American political party been so determined to trash so much of the design of a government that has proven to be so superior to any other in history as today’s most prominent Democrats.

Are they really so desperate to impose their will on the rest of us that they will act to take down the entire country in order to gain power?

Democrats exercising new-found power: some good, some not so much

Since Democrats reclaimed the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives last November, they have wasted no time in putting their agenda into action. 

Unsatisfied with the special counsel’s investigation of then-candidate, and now-President, Donald Trump’s alleged illegal interaction with Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, there has been a lot of talk about starting new Trump investigations, all while serious national problems are left waiting for attention.

But the House has produced and passed one piece of legislation, H.R. 1, which the Democrat majority calls the “For the People Act.” It is intended “To expand Americans' access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, and strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and for other purposes.”

H.R. 1 has some potentially good features, if properly structured, such as reducing big money in politics.Money for political campaigns should come only from those who are eligible to vote for those candidates or measures on the ballot, and who will be directly affected by those elections. That includes businesses in districts where they actually operate, which should be able to make limited contributions.

However, H.R. 1 contains campaign-spending restrictions that benefit incumbents, including President Donald Trump. Why should incumbents receive favored status?

One poorly considered feature is that Democrats want to lower the voting age to 16. They argue that 16 year-olds are old enough to drive, get married, rent an apartment, work and pay taxes, therefore they are old enough to vote. However, that list contains things that are not universally allowed for 16 year-olds across the nation, and other things that require parental approval.

We are reminded that voting is a right. But it is also a serious responsibility; it should not be available to just anyone, or to everyone. Voting requires maturity, knowledge and forethought. Are 16 year-olds really mature enough, and knowledgeable enough to vote responsibly?

When the voting age was lowered from the age of majority – 21 years of age – to 18, the rationale was that anyone old enough to fight, be injured or perhaps die for their country is old enough to vote.

Whether one is capable of voting responsibly is not a question of age, but of preparation and maturity. At what age is someone adequately versed in the way our country is organized, and why it was designed that way? At what age are they knowledgeable enough about political issues and candidates?

Therefore, a better idea would be that someone 18, 19 or 20 who is actually serving in the military would be able to vote. Otherwise, that right and responsibility comes at age 21.

Some Democrats would go even farther in allowing unprepared and otherwise ineligible people to vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for example, recently proposed a truly irresponsible idea. Citing what she termed the wondrous things immigrants bring to America, she said: “And we want them, when they come here, to be fully part of our system. And that means not suppressing the vote of our newcomers to America.” She left unaddressed the question of whether they are here legally or illegally.

Given the Democrats consistent obstruction of Trump’s efforts to halt the entry of thousands of illegal aliens across the southern border, it appears that she not only prefers no restriction on who comes into America, but also thinks that once here they should be able to vote in elections.

It is incomprehensible that so many actually think this idea is sensible. Many or perhaps most of those wanting to enter America are good people looking for a better life. But not all are. They need to prove they deserve to be admitted, before they come in, and not receive any benefits until they do.

Though not a part of H.R. 1, the Electoral College is a target of the Left. Many of them, still feeling the sting of defeat more than two years after the election, think it denied Clinton the presidency after she collected more of the popular vote than did Trump.

The Electoral College is an original element in the Founders’ design of the government, being addressed in Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution, which outlines the way presidential elections are conducted. It was a brilliant element of our government’s structure.

In reality, Clinton lost because she ran a bad campaign, choosing not to campaign in some states that ended up voting red. This helps explain precisely why the Electoral College is necessary: because Americans who do not live on the coasts and in other population centers – who live in what is called “flyover country” – deserve something to balance their desires and electoral preferences against those of the population centers.

Ask yourself: Do we really want presidential candidates focusing only on New York, California and a few other highly populated places during campaigns, telling them what it takes to get their votes, and ignoring the rest of us? 

The Electoral College helps balance the electoral power of large states and large cities with the tens of millions of Americans who would otherwise be at their mercy. It must be protected from the power seekers.

Democrats re-take the House: It is just as bad as we expected

She’s baaa-aaak! Imagining herself suddenly somehow equal to the President of the United States, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, basked in the glory of getting the gavel returned, after Democrats won back control of the House in the mid-term election.

Anxious to get back control of the House and wallowing in the glory of things to come, prior to the opening of the 2019 Congress caucusing Democrats, led by Maxine Waters, D-CA were overheard singing: “Investigate! Salivate! Dance to the music!”

And right on cue, the political foolishness began. The bad ideas Democrats had been discussing and preparing to unleash were officially unleashed.

Barely after members were sworn in and the election of the Speaker was completed, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-CA, rushed forth to introduce articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump as his first order of business.

Not long after that, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-TN, introduced a few new bills, one of which proposes the elimination of the Electoral College.

They also introduced a bill that many people would support to fund government agencies affected by the shutdown. Too good to be true, however, the bill also contained a hidden element that would provide more than a half-billion dollars in pro-abortion funding, including repealing a provision implemented by the Trump administration that would not fund NGOs that engaged in pro-abortion activities.

On the matter of impeachment, freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, wasted no time in calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump just hours after being sworn in.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters Thursday night, Tlaib said: "People love you and you win. And when your son looks at you and says, 'Momma, look you won. Bullies don't win.' And I said, 'Baby, they don't, because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the [vulgarity deleted].'”

Where the comment immediately placed her high in the running for the “2019 Classless Congressional Comment” award, it also garnered her much attention, but also a little welcome Democrat criticism.

Defensively, Tlaib pointed out that her “colorful” language should not overshadow her message. Well, if your message is really important to you, don’t use colorful language that interferes with it.

While we are on the topic of newbies, the freshman Democrat Darling and self-described socialist and radical, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has danced and talked her way into the limelight.

Her dancing may well be the strongest of her talents, with economic understanding bringing up the rear. The 29 year-old Representative has displayed a great lack of understanding of her country’s Constitution and government organization, characteristic of many others of her age.

She has expressed strong support for raising taxes on the highest wage earners to as much as 70 percent to pay for her list of socialistic freebies. As ridiculous an idea as this is, it wouldn’t make a dent in the costs of the programs she favors.

A 70 percent tax is punitive, and would shift a great deal of money to government use rather than use by those who earned it, and has very little support. It heaps unjust obligations on the top earners, who already shoulder a hugely disproportionate share of America’s tax bill.

Democrats apparently have been forbidden from discussing the death of Police Officer Ronil Singh, the most recent American to be killed by an illegal alien. Nancy Pelosi reportedly responded to a question about this senseless crime, “No comment.”

The ban on discussion is apparently complete, prohibiting even the expression of sympathy to Singh’s family and fellow officers, lest they admit indirectly that we have a true and serious illegal alien problem that includes sanctuary cities/fugitive cities. They didn’t even allow the automatic reaction to a gun death: the call for gun control.

As the 18^th partial shutdown of the federal government since 1976 continues into its second week, there is no agreement between Congressional Democrats and President Trump to end it, as this is written.

Ranging from a few days to more than a month, under six presidents, both Democrat and Republican – Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, G.H.W. Bush and Obama – government shutdowns are not uncommon. The longest one lasted 32 days under Bill Clinton.

The responsibility for the security of the United States and its citizens falls upon the shoulders of the Executive Branch: the President, not the Speaker of the House or the Senate Minority Leader.

Following the advice – the sincere and desperation-prompted pleas – of the people who are on the border trying to secure it, Trump wants an impenetrable barrier along sections of the border.

Under those conditions, Congressional Democrats, who voted to fund a wall previously, are instead acting to support the status quo, which includes the horrible things illegal aliens have done and will do, while Trump is working to secure the border and improve the immigration process.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million people in exchange for the promise of border security. But border security was not achieved. Reagan said that was his biggest mistake. Trump does not want to make that same mistake.

In other news, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, introduced a Congressional term limits bill.

We need to learn to appreciate what America’s Founders gave us

Donald Trump was unofficially declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election early in the morning on November 9, and that victory survived the slow vote counting in some states, and challenges of voting irregularities. And last Monday that victory was finally verified when the electors of the 50 states and the District of Columbia that comprise the Electoral College gathered in their respective districts to officially cast their votes.

The integrity of the Electoral College survived both the illegal and legal efforts of Trump opponents to bribe, intimidate or otherwise persuade Trump electors to not vote for him, with unexpected results: While a few electors did not vote as they were instructed by the voters they represented, the vast majority did as they should have done. And Trump won this contest, too. Of the 538 electors only seven of them did not vote according to the voting in their districts. Five of the “faithless” electors withheld their vote from Hillary Clinton, while only two withheld their vote from Trump.

Democrats and liberals have been crazy since the election, and now want the Electoral College to go the way of those thousands of missing emails from Clinton’s private server, since she won the popular vote by 2.1 percent, but lost the electoral vote. However, the Electoral College did precisely what it was designed to do; it did not “misfire,” as the Clinton camp charges.

The opinions of scholars and other commentators uphold the value of the Electoral College. For example, The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky explains: “In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule.”

In addition to those concerns, “as students of ancient history, the Founders feared the destructive passions of direct democracy, and as recent subjects of an overreaching monarch, they equally feared the rule of an elite unresponsive to the will of the people. The Electoral College was a compromise, neither fully democratic nor aristocratic,” writes Jarrett Stepman, an editor for The Daily Signal.

The University of Buffalo’s James Campbell explains that had the popular vote been the mechanism that chose the president, candidates would have focused their campaigns on the population centers, ignoring the rest of the country. And he further suggests that then voters probably would have behaved differently, too. Many in the less populated areas, for example, might have stayed home, feeling that their vote didn’t matter, effectively disenfranchising them.

California essentially provided Clinton the 2.8 million votes that comprised her popular vote victory. The Electoral College protected the interests of those millions of Americans who do not live in the population centers.

The other side of that argument is that under the Electoral College system, candidates would limit their campaigns to the swing states, producing a similar effect as the popular vote method does. However, swing states change from time to time, whereas population centers do not.

Looking at the final version of the electoral map, Clinton’s strength lay primarily in the coastal areas and a few spots in the middle, while Trump’s support covered a tall and wide swath across the area between the coasts. Clinton’s ballot power came primarily from New York, California and Chicago, the population centers, while the huge area of the country that went for Trump covers primarily small towns/cities and sparsely populated areas, the heartland of America.

And that is the value of the Electoral College system: it protects Americans in flyover country from the tyranny of big city dwellers, who generally have a much different set of values and desires. And remember that the president’s job is to act in the best interests of the entire country, not to satisfy the desires of a voting majority or of the big cities.

What if instead of the football team that scores the most points winning the game, the winner is the team that gained the most yards? That is a similar situation to electing a president: The number of votes – like the number of yards – is not necessarily the most important factor.

So don't do away with the Electoral College, as the spurned Clinton voters want. It provides the balance of national interests the Founders understood was necessary.

One change that makes sense is to stop having electors that must get together in a formal ceremony to vote. Since the results are known when the vote count is done, this step is unnecessary; it serves no useful purpose, costs money, delays the finalizing of the voter’s decision, and provides losing parties an opportunity for harmful mischief, as we witnessed.

And while the aggrieved are creating mischief, they are also building false hopes, which will cause even more grief when their mischief fails to change the results of the election, and generates bad feelings that will endure long after the election is over.

These days some group wants to change virtually everything about America that made it the unqualified success it has been since it was founded.

Stop trying to change it and instead enjoy its abundant benefits.