By: Nelson Abdullah
Conscience of a Conservative
When the Democrats can’t get their leftist, anti-American legislation passed or worry about their diminishing popularity among voters, they often dream up new plans to stacking the deck, either by adding a few million new voters or by adding a few more members to Congress. The sole reason behind the Democrats immigration reform is the assumption that most of the illegal immigrants already on American soil would become registered Democrats if the were granted citizenship for no other reason than outright gratitude. I wonder why Republicans like John Boehner haven’t figured this out yet. Now we are reading about the Democrats plan to split California into six new states and Debra Bowen, the Democrat Secretary of State of California, has given the go ahead for the petition drive to gather signatures to get the plan on the state ballot. Of course the news media that covered the story never mentioned that if such a measure was approved it would add 8 more Senators to Congress and at least 6 of them would probably be Democrats. California already has two U.S. Senators who are both Democrats so the newly minted 5 new states would each acquire 2 new U.S. Senators and all but 2 of these 10 would probably be Democrats. Since the membership in the U.S. House of Representatives is based on population, there would likely be no change in the number of Congressman.
This isn’t the first time in our history that the Democrats have tried to stack the deck. Back in 1937 Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court with extra Justices because he was having trouble getting his liberal laws upheld in court. Wikipedia has the full story here, but below is just a brief extract. It took an act of Congress to put a halt to Roosevelt’s insidious plan.
The Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937[1] (frequently called the “court-packing plan”)[2] was a legislative initiative proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Roosevelt’s purpose was to obtain favorable rulings regarding New Deal legislation that the court had ruled unconstitutional.[3] The central provision of the bill would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, up to a maximum of six, for every member of the court over the age of 70 years and 6 months.
In the Judiciary Act of 1869 Congress had established that the United States Supreme Court would consist of the Chief Justice and eight associate justices. During Roosevelt’s first term the Supreme Court struck down several New Deal measures as being unconstitutional. Roosevelt sought to reverse this by changing the makeup of the court through the appointment of new additional justices who he hoped would rule his legislative initiates did not exceed the constitutional authority of the government. Since the U.S. Constitution does not define the size of the Supreme Court, Roosevelt pointed out that it was within the power of the Congress to change it. The legislation was viewed by members of both parties as an attempt to stack the court, and was opposed by many Democrats, including Vice President John Nance Garner.[4][5] The bill came to be known as Roosevelt’s “court-packing plan”.[2]
At least in 1937 we had enough people in Congress to acknowledge the limitation of the powers of the president and the fortitude to do something about it. Things were a lot different then in other ways, too, we didn’t have a news media that was owned by the Democratic Party. And the Republican Party was entirely more conservative than it is today.
My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Oldironsides.
