Category: term limits

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FYI term limits

Not Term Limited

Kamala Harris, socialist, communist, democrat

How to get Kamala Harris out of the #1 spot, should Joe Biden halt his bid for re-​election — which many, many insiders are calling for?

Instead of a shot at the presidency, offer her a historical first: become the first three-​term vice president!

She has served one term under Biden. Accept two terms under, say, Newsom!

This would be ideal. It would allow Democratic insiders to promote a white man (which they itch to do) and keep Kamala as a token Person of Color. It would quell the demands of both the intersectionalist-​obsessed and African-​American voters (though Kamala is not African-​American — that does not appear to matter).

This is not much of an offer. True. But it is something. Kamala Harris is not presidential timber. But she is lumber fit enough for a perennial VP slot.

And to the objection that this would run afoul of term limits, the response is easy: the two-​term limit, affixed against the Presidency by the 22nd Amendment, does not apply to the VP, only to the P!

Just FYI.

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initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary term limits

A Second Life for Limits

Congress, age limit, voters, democracy

Will the Supreme Court let states impose limits on the representatives and senators they send to Washington, D.C.?

Thanks to events in North Dakota, there’s a good chance this question is about to asked again. 

And get a different answer.

The first time was thirty years ago. The case: U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton.

In May 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in a 5 – 4 decision, that states cannot impose restrictions like term limits on their congressional delegations.

But: “Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each State of the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them in Congress,” observed Justice Clarence Thomas in his dissent. “And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.”

Now 61 percent of North Dakota voters have passed a ballot measure to impose an age limit on their congressmen. The 1995 Supreme Court would have ruled it unconstitutional. The only justice serving on the high court then who is still there is Thomas.

Everybody thinks that North Dakota’s outlawing of ancient candidates will be challenged in court. In a June 17 podcast for U.S. Term Limits, its president, Philip Blumel, says that USTL would welcome such a challenge.

“Surely, U.S. Term Limits versus Thornton would be the basis” for the challenge and would thus “provide an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the issue.”

Moreover, a case brought in federal court won’t necessarily take years to decide, because “sometimes the [Supreme Court] expedites election-​related cases.”

Fingers crossed, everybody.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE: Paul Jacob is a former president of U.S. Term Limits and continues to serve on its board of directors. Paul is currently the president of Liberty Initiative Fund, which made significant contributions to North Dakota’s age limits initiative.

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insider corruption national politics & policies term limits

Nineteen Seconds and Counting

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

We witnessed the epitome of uber-​experienced Washington, last week, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) froze mid-​sentence during a press briefing, unable to utter a sound or make any movement for a seemingly interminable 19 seconds. 

The Republican leader, 81 years of age, the last 38 spent in the United States Senate, was eventually rescued by fellow Republican senators, led away from the microphones.

McConnell has plenty of company in Washington. There’s our doddering octogenarian president. And in Congress, incumbency leads to longevity, which leads to old age. The Senate, Newsmax notes, now “has the highest median age in U.S. history at 65.”

Americans were treated to another gerontocratic spectacle with 90-​year-​old Sen. Diane Feinstein (D‑Calif.), appearing confused at a committee hearing, and being told to vote “aye.” 

And sheepishly complying. 

I started to write, “If this is what experience leads to …” but there is no need for the “if.” It is.

And grist for a million memes. “Family Torn Between Placing Grandpa In Hospice,” runs a Babylon Bee headline, “And Having Him Run For Senate.”

Funny, sure. But this problem isn’t. Getting old isn’t always pretty. And even career politicians such as McConnell and Feinstein deserve better.

So do ‘We, the People’! 

Term limits would solve the problem and be better than age limits. Both are popular — 75 percent favor age limits, while over 80 percent want term limits. But with Congress having dodged the congressional term limits enacted in 24 states back in the 1990s, citizens in North Dakota, with help from U.S. Term Limits, have launched a ballot initiative for 2024 to place an age limit of 80 on their federal representatives.

Three decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly struck down state-​imposed term limits, 5 – 4. Today, what will the High Court determine on age limits?

Inquiring minds want to know. And I really love the movement’s relentless agitation!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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incumbents insider corruption judiciary term limits

Term Limits for Thee

Nancy Pelosi, term limits, gerontocracy

Last Sunday, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now with her own MSNBC program, asked Representative Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) about packing the Supreme Court. 

Rep. Pelosi’s response was, shall we say, telling.

“It’s been over 150 years since we’ve had an expansion of the court,” Pelosi said. “It was in the time of Lincoln that it went up to nine. So the subject of whether that should happen is a discussion. It’s not, say, a rallying cry. But it’s a discussion.”

Ms. Psaki also asked about term limits for the justices, and Nancy eagerly endorsed the idea, insisting there “certainly should be term limits. There certainly should be and if nothing else, there should be some ethical rules that would be followed.”

Justices aren’t getting as rich as congressmen … but still.

“I had one justice tell me he thought the other justices were people of integrity, like a Clarence Thomas,” Pelosi went on. “I’m like, get out of here.”

This plays as comedy off the MSNBC channel, of course. Nancy Pelosi, introduced by Psaki as being in Congress for a long, long time (“first elected to the House when Roe v. Wade had been the law of the land for 14 years”) is herself a fit poster ch — er, octogenarian — for establishing legislative term limits. Highlighting the High Court’s dip in popularity, Pelosi scoffed that the 30 percent approval “seemed high.” Of course, congressional approval is ten percentage points lower, and has been consistently. 

Limits to power is something that applies to others, not oneself, I guess.

With permanent leaches at the teat of the State lingering year after year in office, like Pelosi, our attitude should be, like, get out of here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Do Anything

term limits

How far will officeholders go to kill term limits?

Around the country, so-​called representatives have repealed state legislative term limits enacted as statutes rather than constitutional amendments; gone to court to get term limits outlawed; and even, in one or two instances, ignored term limits on themselves until forced to step aside by judicial action.

I bet that even if voters enact a term limits law with a provision specifically prohibiting legislators from sending a question to the ballot to weaken or repeal voter-​enacted term limits, such a prohibition would not stop lawmakers from proposing just such measures.

Well, it’s time for me to collect on the bet.

In the current legislative session, North Dakota State Representative Jim Kasper submitted a resolution, HCR 3019, to ask North Dakotans to weaken legislative term limits they’d passed just five months ago, last November. Kasper wants a limit of 12 consecutive years in a chamber instead of a lifetime limit of eight years.

What a shocker! He’d like to stay in power longer.

The law voters passed months ago states that the legislature “shall not have authority to propose an amendment to this constitution to alter or repeal” the term limits. This ability is instead “reserved to initiative petition of the people.”

It seems so clear.

Nevertheless, Kasper’s unconstitutional constitutional amendment barreled ahead in the North Dakota legislature until finally expiring in the senate just days ago.

Perhaps the new law should have included something about tarring and feathering lawmakers who try to ignore the ban on acting to undermine their term limits?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits Voting

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Citizen Initiatives, term limits, North Dakota

North Dakota state representatives (and I use that term loosely) are unhappy. 

Very unhappy.

They have no use for the Ethics Commission that voters established back in 2018 by passing a constitutional amendment initiated by citizen petition. State legislators reacted by trying to — ahem — “fix” the horse the ethics measure “rode in on.” 

That is, wreck the state’s ballot initiative process, to prevent citizens from making such reforms happen … without any “help” from politicians.

Legislators placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot to require that any citizen-​initiated amendment be approved not merely by North Dakota voters, but then by both chambers of the state legislature. Their amendment, amid uproar, was finally amended so that if legislators voted the initiative down, voters would get a second vote on it. 

Still, 62 percent of voters said, “No, thanks!”

Then, in 2022, the state Chamber of Commerce and other special interests attempted to use the citizen petition process, which they always say is way too easy. Yet, these insiders failed to gather enough signatures to qualify their measure requiring a 60 percent supermajority to pass an initiative. 

Meanwhile, term limits supporters gathered enough signatures* and, last November, North Dakotans said, “Yes!” 

Seems politicians in Bismarck, the state capital, are even less fond of term limits. They’ve introduced a raft of bills designed to kill the citizen petition process:

  • House Bill 1452 would slap a 90 percent tax on contributions to ballot measures by any American living outside North Dakota. 
  • House Bill 1230 would fine a campaign committee $10,000 and each of committee member $1,000 each if the petitions they turn in fail to have enough valid signatures to qualify the initiative.
  • Senate Concurrent Resolution 4013 would amend the state constitution to (a) require 25 percent more voter signatures, (b) outlaw any payment to signature gatherers (something the U.S. Supreme Court has already unanimously ruled state governments cannot do), © block new residents from petitioning in the state for in some cases over a year, and (d) mandate a 67 percent vote to pass a citizen-​initiated ballot measure. 

North Dakota legislators prove the case for term limits. And the horse it rode in on: citizen initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Though term limits supporters had to fight the 30-​year incumbent Secretary of State’s attempt to block the petition all the way to the state’s highest court, which ruled unanimously to place term limits before the voters.

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