Monday, January 30, 2012

The Constitution of The United States: Restated and Proposed Amendments

This web address can also be accessed at: bit.ly/zPQ2MV

* * *

The following restated and proposed amendments to The Constitution of The United States were written by me without the help of others.

Steven A. Sylwester
January 30, 2012

* * *

RESTATEMENTS OF EXISTING AMENDMENTS:

Amendment II

Plain Sentence: A well-regulated Militia shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms being necessary to the security of a free State.

Amendment IV

Plain Sentence: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects shall not be violated against unreasonable searches and seizures, and no Warrants shall issue supported by Oath or affirmation but upon probable cause and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

Plain Sentence: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, when in actual service in time of War or public danger unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

Plain Sentence: The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial in all criminal prosecutions and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII

Plain Sentence: The right of trial by jury shall be preserved where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars in Suits at common law, and no fact tried by a jury than according to the rules of the common law shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States.

* * *

RESTATED EXISTING CONSTITUTIONAL LANGUAGE PROPOSED AS A NEW AMENDMENT:


The United States Constitution reads: Article II, Section 1. [5] No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; …

Plain Sentence: No person except (either) a natural born Citizen at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution or a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President; …

Simplified Plain Sentence Restatement: No person except a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President; …

* * *

NEW PROPOSED AMENDMENTS:

Proposal #1: Supreme Court Gender Equality

Gender equality shall be guaranteed on the Supreme Court and on the Court of Appeals according to the following:

1. The Congress shall determine an odd number of Justices no fewer than nine who shall together compose the Supreme Court. The total number of Justices shall include one Chief Justice of the United States and the remaining even number of Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom all shall be citizens of the United States.

Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation.

When vacancies occur, the President shall nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who are then appointed by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. The Chief Justice shall be appointed for nine years, and shall not be reappointed Chief Justice thereafter. Associate Justices shall be appointed to hold their offices during good behavior. Successive Chief Justices shall alternate between male and female without exception.

The President shall nominate the Chief Justice according to gender from among the Associate Justices, except no person shall be eligible for nomination who would be more than 69 years old at the time of appointment. If no Associate Justice is qualified by age to be appointed the Chief Justice, the President shall appoint any other qualified person.

If an Associate Justice is nominated to be the Chief Justice by the President but fails to be appointed by the Senate, that Associate Justice shall retain the position of Associate Justice. If an Associate Justice becomes the Chief Justice, that Justice shall retire from the Supreme Court when the nine-year appointment as Chief Justice expires.

2. All Court of Appeals en banc courts shall be composed of an even number of Circuit Judges, of whom half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation. Only if the Circuit Chief Judge presides shall an entire en banc court be composed of an odd number of Judges.

3. Upon ratification, the amendment shall be enacted straightforwardly in due time.

All new Associate Justices shall be female until an equal number of male and female Associate Justices are seated on the Supreme Court. Thereafter, all Associate Justice seats will be identified as being either male or female, and will be filled as the need arises according to strict gender distinction without exception.

The current Chief Justice shall complete a nine-year term from the date he was sworn in as Chief Justice, and shall then immediately retire from the Supreme Court and shall be replaced by the first female Chief Justice of the United States. If the current Chief Justice leaves his position for any reason before his term expires, his appointed successor shall be female.

On a district basis, all Court of Appeals appointments shall be female until gender equality is achieved among active Circuit Judges. Thereafter, new appointments shall be made in a manner that maintains gender equality among all active Judges.

* * *

Proposal #2: Universal Health Care

The government shall provide all citizens with free and equal health care, including all tests, treatments, medications, therapies, procedures, surgeries, hospitalizations, and long-term care that:
1) are legal and approved by the government,
2) are done according to government standards by government licensed physicians and practitioners,
3) are not subject to malpractice claims or lawsuits of any sort, and
4) are affordable within an overall government health care program budget that does not exceed 15% of the government’s GDP.

Government licensed physicians and practitioners who work solely within the government health care program shall be exempt from any need for professional malpractice insurance of any sort: they shall be personally immune in all cases from any legal claims or lawsuits that could result from patients who suffer injury, bad outcomes, or death while under their care. However, such physicians and practitioners shall be subject to loss of their license for professional malpractice and/or negligence, and may also be subject to criminal charges, and to their penalties if found guilty.

Personal health insurance and long-term care insurance shall be unnecessary, except to provide desired coverage for experimental care and extraordinary end-of-life care that is not approved by the government program.

The government health care program shall be paid for by two dedicated and approximately equal taxations: a national sales tax (excluding food and energy purchases) and a corporate and personal tax on equity in real property based on government assessed value (excluding hospitals, schools, governments, and approved religious organizations).

* * *

Proposal #3: Multinational Corporations Designated Foreign Nations

Re: Article I Section 8. [3]

All multinational corporations or enterprises, international corporations, transnational corporations, and micro-multinational corporations with management headquarters located in a home country outside of the United States shall be recognized as foreign Nations, and shall be required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.

* * *


Proposal #4: One Percent Ownership of Patents and Copyrights


Re: Article I Section 8. [8]

The United States shall have one percent (1%) ownership of each and every copyright and patent issued and registered by the United States government. The ownership shall be limited to the pre-tax gross revenues generated by any and all uses of that which is protected by U.S. copyright and patent law, and all such ownership shall be without exception. All revenues earned from such ownership shall be used to fund the free public education guaranteed to citizens by law, with all revenues from patents supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education exclusively and all revenues from copyrights supporting either Arts and Humanities education or Physical Education and Health education exclusively according to the general categories that create the revenues (i.e. computer-related patents support computer science education, music copyrights support music arts education, sporting event copyrights support physical education, and so forth).

* * *


Proposal #5: Water, Sun, and Underground Natural Resources Management


Re: Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2.

Section. 1.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all public waters in the United States. Public waters shall be all waters:
1) from groundwater springs or from headwaters, snow melt, or runoff that combine to form brooks, creeks, and streams that flow into an ocean or gulf or that become tributaries to rivers that flow into an ocean or gulf;
2) from aquifers accessed or potentially accessed by human-made wells and/or pumping mechanisms; and
3) from lakes of any size and any origin that serve as water sources for any life-sustaining human uses, including fishing and agricultural uses.
The States shall be responsible for all waters of any sort originating in the States until the waters first cross a State boundary or until the waters begin to define the boundary between two States or two nations, at which point the federal government shall become wholly responsible for those waters thereafter.

Section. 2.
Presiding jurisdiction and responsibility shall be to guarantee pure and clean water:
1) that is free from human-made or human-caused pollutants that are toxic or harmful to any living creatures and/or plant life in nature and
2) that is treatable to be made safe for human drinking, cooking, and hygiene in every case, including in the case of pregnant women, except when natural flooding or other polluting disasters occur.
The Congress shall provide remedy if necessary when pollutions occur in public waters and shall legislate the fines and punishments to be levied when municipalities and/or companies are found guilty of polluting. The Congress shall act when new scientific discovery reveals that existing standards are insufficient to protect good health and when new technology invention allows for the affordable improvement of existing standards.

Reckless and/or negligent polluting of public waters shall be a felony, and willful polluting of public waters for profit that causes either human death or at least a yearlong loss of use of a public waters source that had been potable for an established population of more than 5,000 people shall be a capital offense. Corporate executives shall be held personally accountable for any polluting of public waters done by their companies when foreknowledge can be proven.

Section. 3.
Municipal water treatments shall include only those substances and processes that are used solely for water purification purposes. No municipal water treatments of any sort that are intended to be either medicinal or health promoting as additives in human drinking water shall be allowed.

Section. 4.
Nowhere in the United States shall public waters be controlled by a private citizen or by a corporation that is not a municipality. Public access to free drinking water shall be a human right at all times in every municipality in the United States. The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.

Section. 5.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all known and unknown precious metals, minerals, ores, and energy-generating substances and gases that can be mined, drilled for, or otherwise taken from the Earth on the public lands, on the private lands, and in the territorial waters of the United States and its territories.

From public lands and territorial waters, as compensation for being the owner of the land and the ocean or gulf floor and for contracting extraction rights, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. Any contracting of extraction rights shall be conditional upon actual work being done, and contracts shall be wholly rescinded if no extractions are made during any 365-day period following the signing of the contract. Extraction rights shall not be given to foreign nations or to companies that do not have their corporate headquarters in the United States.

From private lands, as compensation for being Sovereign and Protector of those lands and of the public roadways, highways, and waterways used for all necessary transporting, the United States shall receive four percent (4%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. If access to the Earth beneath public lands is made underground from private lands, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means.

Section. 6.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from contracting extraction rights on public lands and in territorial waters as needed:
1) on environmental clean-ups that will create and protect pure and clean water;
2) on research to determine effective ways to replenish the depleting aquifers, especially the Ogallala Aquifer; and
3) on public waterworks projects that will enhance and protect the drinking water sources for established municipalities.

The United States shall spend all revenues earned from extractions made from private lands on the Nikola Tesla Project, which shall be a joint project with other cooperating nations to develop clean unlimited energy from the Earth and its higher atmosphere, especially from the ionosphere and the magnetosphere. When it is discovered how to harness controllable atmospheric electricity that can be used as a universal source of nonpolluting industrial power, the technology shall be freely shared among nations as a gift from the Creator to the whole world.

Section. 7.
A national building code shall require architectural design inclusion of dedicated efficient space for photo-voltaic system installations according to industry-established minimum space requirements for all new construction of residential, commercial, and governmental structures enclosing at least 1,000 square feet of heated space.

All existing structures shall be exempt as long as no remodeling involves any structural changes to existing roofs, excluding any structural changes that solely relate to replacing or installing gutters, low profile skylights, vents, satellite dishes, and/or roofing. Any structural additions to existing structures that add or alter roof-lines to accommodate additional square footage shall not be exempt from the code requirements.

Required shall be a minimum of 100 square feet of clear roof surface to accommodate solar modules or panels faced due south at an angle that matches the location’s latitude with an allowable 15- to 20-degree variation east or west from due south. The solar panels shall be located where they will not be shaded by trees or intruded upon by vents, chimneys, or other roof structure penetrations. An efficient accessible routing path from the roof array to a centralized inverter and then to the structure’s load center for the photo-voltaic system’s generated energy shall be required.

* * *

Proposal #6: Public Education


Re: Article. I. Section. 8.

Section. 1.
The Congress shall fund, oversee the administration of, and nominate students to the six tuition-free United States military academies located at: West Point, New York, for the Army; Annapolis, Maryland, for the Navy and the Marine Corps; Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the Air Force; New London, Connecticut, for the Coast Guard; Kings Point, New York, for the Merchant Marine; and Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, for the Cyber/Biologic Defense.

Section. 2.
The Congress shall require the States to provide thirteen years of tuition-free public education for all United States citizens and all otherwise legal residents from age five through age eighteen. Public education shall be according to three national standards:
1) Every student shall be literate at no less than age-appropriate-grade-level (plus or minus one year) while being actively challenged and fully facilitated to achieve personal potentials in all core academic subjects, including those of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (“literate” being defined as educated, cultured, and lucid within an American social, philosophical, and historical context as taught in a thirteen-year standard curriculum that explores America from 1492 to the current time, with an ability to read, write, and effectively communicate in the English language using current computer technologies);
2) Exceptional students shall be individually advanced to the academic level at which they can succeed while being challenged; and
3) Students whose academic skills competency and knowledge proficiency are measured in the aggregate minimally either two years below or two years above age-appropriate-grade-level shall be designated as Special Education students and shall receive educational funding at twice the normal rate (competency and proficiency testing shall be done when requested by a teacher, parent, or student).

Thirteen years of tuition-free public education shall not be defined by the completion of a thirteen-year standard curriculum that ends in high school graduation in every case. Some lower-tier Special Education students will remain functionally illiterate despite all teaching efforts while some upper-tier Special Education students will graduate from a community college or a public university before their nineteenth birthday and shall thereby receive their college and/or university education on a tuition-free basis.

The term “tuition-free” applies only in the case of public education institutions, including any school designations that encompass any part of the spectrum from kindergarten enrollee through master degree recipient, that is: inclusive from primary school through public university. It does not include graduate studies at the doctoral degree level.

Students who enroll in private schools of any sort shall receive government vouchers that are the equivalent of their local public school tuition if the private schools they enroll in are accredited by the government. Government accreditation of private schools shall only regard standard subjects that are common to local public schools and shall not regard religious subjects of any sort. A homeschool student shall receive government vouchers to rent textbooks and an educational computer hardware and software package if those items have been approved and accredited by the government for homeschool use, if the student is fully registered according to the laws governing homeschool status and is government-approved in that status, and if the total worth of the vouchers for the student does not exceed the local public school tuition cost.

The government vouchers shall pay the vendor or the private school directly in all cases, and in no case shall government vouchers be redeemable for cash by either a student or a student’s parent or legal guardian.

Section. 3.
The Congress shall require the States to identify all exceptional students who are intellectually either moderately-to-highly gifted or exceptionally-to-profoundly gifted by standard academic measures (“moderately-to-highly gifted” being in the top two percent or 98th percentile and “exceptionally-to-profoundly gifted” being in the top one percent or 99th percentile). The United States shall recognize its most gifted citizens — its geniuses — as a natural resource and a national treasure, and shall maximize the potential of that resource and treasure through its public education system in every individual case beginning at the earliest possible opportunity. However, no interventions shall ever be made against the will of the student, regardless of the student’s potential to excel; the Pursuit of Happiness shall stand as an unalienable Right of every individual citizen, even the citizen who is a minor child.

The Congress shall forbid any notion that the purpose of public education is to socialize the citizenry. The purpose of public education shall be to make citizens literate in useful knowledge, confident in factoring new information into old thinking, and competent in self-directed analysis, so that public education might inspire joy and courage in its graduates through the benefits that derive from life-long learning habits, a purposeful informed participation in America’s future, and an enduring appreciation for political dissent and for the American free enterprise system. Public education in the United States shall work to cultivate this flower: that, in every citizen’s life, the gift to America shall be the citizen and the gift to the citizen shall be America.

Section. 4.
The Congress shall establish a national three-year merit-based public high school for the nation’s most intellectually gifted science-minded high school students. The national public high school shall be simultaneously located at no less than 150 public research university campuses nationwide, shall be tuition-free without exception, shall have highly selective enrollment with requirements and standards that cannot be challenged, and shall use the same intensive accelerated-learning curriculum at every site without exception. The defined curriculum shall offer courses in mathematics, computer science, and the physical sciences of chemistry and physics according to standard prerequisite streams, with the high school students enrolling in university classes with university students at times during all three years.
The offered majors shall be limited to:
1) Mathematics through at least Elementary Linear Algebra,
2) Computer Science through at least the standard university sophomore-year computer science sequence course for computer and information science majors that is taken concurrently with the Elements of Discrete Mathematics sequence,
3) Chemistry through the Organic Chemistry sequence and Organic Analysis, and
4) Physics through the standard university sophomore-year physics sequence course for physics majors that covers physics of waves and statistical thermodynamics.

All students shall take the same six Advanced Placement courses: English Language, United States History, United States Government & Politics, and Chemistry during the sophomore year and English Literature and Economics during the junior year. United States History and United States Government & Politics shall be combined as one course. All students shall concurrently take the university calculus sequence and the university calculus-based physics sequence before graduating. There shall be no electives other than choosing a major.

The national public high school capstone shall be a non-graded senior-year-long Colloquy on the topic: Morality, Ethics & Society: Science & Technology in the 21st Century. The Colloquy shall be student-directed according to established rules; shall result in United States Constitution Amendment Proposals, World Treaty Proposals, and Philosophy of Science and Technology Definition Statements; and shall conclude each term with deserving students receiving a Linus Pauling Achievement Award honoring the American scientist and peace activist who is one of only two people to have won more than one Nobel Prize in different fields, and the only person to win two undivided Nobel Prizes: the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in peace and disarmament campaigns establishing The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Though the defined curriculum does not offer life sciences courses, such courses can be taken optionally during summer term if offered by a host university. National public high school students shall be limited to attending only at their home host university during the fall-through-spring school year, but can attend at any national public high school host university on a tuition-free basis during summer term. The student shall pay any costs for summer term other than tuition costs, except the United States shall pay all costs if the student is requested to enroll in a particular course or program by the government.

The national public high school shall operate under the aegis of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration with cooperation from the non-military intelligence agencies and from the United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy, and with oversight from the Congress. The national public high school shall not answer to local school boards or to the States in any way. The national public high school graduation requirements shall supersede State high school graduation requirements without exception.

Section. 5.
The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have no physical fitness requirements whatsoever. It shall at all times maintain a Stephen Hawking Rule which declares that the mind alone shall determine eligibility and no physical defect of any sort shall be disqualifying. The Cyber/Biologic Defense shall be disciplined and uniformed, but shall not undergo any traditional basic training that includes strenuous whole-body strength-related activities of any sort, including marching. A brilliant wheelchair-bound person is eligible to enroll in the United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy and to serve in the Cyber/Biologic Defense at any rank of command, including Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The term “cyber/biologic” refers to all things related either to transmissions of any sort in cyberspace known and unknown, including any hostile activity on the Internet, any manifestation of computer hacking, and any potentially harmful computer data manipulation, or to hostile biological actions that could be property-damaging, disease-causing, and/or life-threatening in any way, or to both simultaneously in any evil pairing. The term “defense” must naturally have an offensive component to be whole.

The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have access to all national public high school student transcripts and shall be welcome to freely recruit national public high school students.

* * *

Proposal #7: Certain Rights Regarding Obligations and Freedoms

No one’s right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness shall exceed that of another’s all things being equal. No one shall be required to be a hero, act selflessly, or in any way endanger him/herself for another under any circumstance.

Triage decisions and actions are not ever subject to legal consequences, even when mercy killing occurs. In disaster and catastrophe, the Natural Law — the Survival of the Fittest —applies without question.

Chivalry and Good Samaritan acts shall not be legally required of the individual unless they are first expressly required of society as a whole in written law, for mercy cannot be expected where it is not encouraged.

The law altogether describes what society considers “good enough,” and it is there that fairness begins, never to be better or more righteous than that “altogether” measure but always to be at least just as mean, at least in spirit; for consistency — “good enough” — is the right measure of things, even when it is wrong in actual truth.

An unwanted guest cannot be legally expelled in one case but not the other, no matter the circumstance, no matter the eventual outcome, for the divine gift of Eden was the knowledge of good and evil, not life. As is the measure for man so too shall be the measure for woman: no less than that and no more.

* * *

Posted March 11, 2012
Proposal #8: Definitions of Law, Religion, and Judicial Limits

Re: Article. I. Section. 8. and Article. III. Section. 2.

Section. 1.
The minimum context for all judicial considerations of the Constitution in all proceedings in the supreme and inferior Courts shall be one complete and uninterrupted sentence without abridgment or reduction of any sort. A judicial ruling based on either a single clause or a partial sentence that has been disembodied from its whole and complete sentence in the Constitution shall be categorically unconstitutional unless any right consideration of the minimum context will not alter the ruling. Judicial consideration of an underlying Plain Sentence in the Constitution shall be legitimate if the Plain Sentence reduces punctuation in its reordering of all the clauses in the source sentence as it is stated in the Constitution and if the Plain Sentence cannot be disputed according to the long established Rules of Grammar and Sentence Structure for the English language. An indisputable Plain Sentence shall supersede Original Language in establishing the intent of the Constitution.

Section. 2.
The Constitution shall be first and last a Principle: a Philosophy that Guides its Laws, and not ever Laws outside of that context. The Principle of the Constitution shall enlighten, embolden, and encourage the American Premise, which is from The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” What were once “all men” are now “all people” — specifically, all citizens of the United States of America.

The Principle of the Constitution shall have as its fundamental understanding that as the opposite of Love is not Hate, it is Indifference, the opposite of Life is therefore not Death, it is the lack of Freedom to act according to one’s own Will — and so too for Liberty and so too for the pursuit of Happiness. To be utterly clear: the Right to Life is also the Right to Death, the Right to Liberty is also the Right to Obligation and Commitment, and the Right to pursue Happiness is also the Right to be Sad by one’s own choosing. The Constitution shall possess this as its fundamental understanding regarding all citizens of the United States without exception.

The Principle of the Constitution shall be inseparable from the First Amendment, which shall be elemental and irreducible as one complete thought that in its total provides the essential definition of “religion” for all judicial considerations under the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Furthermore, “religion” shall be defined according to Webster’s Dictionary as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith, “ which shall include an adherence to any aspect of scientific thinking that is speculative, theoretical, and unproven, especially regarding the Origins of the Universe and of Life on Earth.

The Constitution shall premise that everyone has a god and a religion, that “god” is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “a person or thing of supreme value,” and that religion is how people live their lives in relation to their god. A religion can be entirely personal with no connection whatsoever to a group of fellow believers of any sort or to any creed, tradition, or scripture. A religion does not have to be organized and does not have to use the language or the rituals of the sacred to be a religion, it only must include loyalty to a belief or to a set of beliefs that cannot be proven, and any such beliefs can range helterskelter from unspecific, undefined, and changeable to specific, defined, and unchanging and be held at any depth of emotion and intellect and at any level of certainty; a person’s god can be anyone or anything, including him/herself or his/her favorite possession or pastime. By every accounting of others, a person’s religion can be entirely vacuous, wholly misguided, and without any perceptible merit at all. A religion need not promote personal virtue or in any way serve the common good to be valid and within the constitutional definition. Any judgment of hypocrisy made by others shall be irrelevant, even if it can be rightly proven beyond any doubt in a Court of law.

Religion shall be sacrosanct and inviolable under the law for the individual citizen only, but not for any group, even including the Roman Catholic Church, even including an individual family; no one shall be entitled to definitively decide for another regarding religion, either by defining god or by defining beliefs, except to teach beliefs and to then welcome another to freely join a group that shares those taught beliefs. To the extent that groups are made up of free-thinking individuals, religious groups shall have constitutional rights to liberty and protection, but only to that extent; no religious group as a hierarchy or as an institution or as a tradition and no religious leader of any sort regardless of esteem shall ever have the authority in the United States and its Territories to exercise binding legal jurisdiction over any person or property or to in any way supersede the Constitution.

The United States government shall recognize American patriotism as a religion born in blood and sacrifice and the “sacred Honor” that has been pledged anew by every generation that has since joined Lives and Fortunes with those Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Therefore, Congress shall encourage and facilitate the ongoing teaching of comparative religions in the United States public schools beginning in kindergarten so that an abiding sense of the sacred might be instilled in the nation’s citizens.

Section. 3.
The law in the United States shall not be defined by legal precedents made in Court rulings, but shall in every case be defined by the Congress in acts of legislation. The sole duty and obligation of the Courts shall be to rightly settle disputes within the bounds of existing law using only the language of existing law and any Understanding in effect.

A Court ruling shall be final and binding unless an appeal to a higher Court overrules a lower Court, in which case the final and binding ruling becomes that of the higher Court. A final and binding ruling permanently settles a case when no more appeals are possible, and any such ruling thereby potentially creates an Understanding that will remain in effect for one thousand days. An Understanding is any clarification of law formed by a judge, a panel of judges, or a jury to justify a ruling in which the existing law was either vague or nonspecific to the needs of the settled dispute. An Understanding shall prevail in all Courts without exception until either the Congress acts or the Understanding expires. The Congress can legislate the Understanding into law according to the Court ruling or in an alteration of its own making, including the legislating of a new law that is entirely contrary to the Understanding, or it can choose to let the Understanding expire, in which case the law reverts back to its existing vague and nonspecific language.

The Courts, including the Supreme Court, shall judge according to the existing language of the Constitution and its associated laws and according to the Principle of the Constitution, and shall advise the Congress of shortcomings, needs, and inconsistencies in the law through the ruling clarifications that result in Understandings. It is the duty and obligation of the Congress to legislate the laws of the United States.

Past Supreme Court rulings that have effectively created new law by either establishing or building on legal precedents shall be reduced to Understandings on a going-back-two-years-every-year basis, with each Understanding expiring one thousand days after being reduced from its precedent, such that one hundred years of past precedents shall become Understandings during the next fifty years. That process shall continue unabated until no precedents remain in the law of the United States.

Legal precedents shall become nothing more than footnotes in the history of United States jurisprudence; they shall have no remaining force of law within them once the transition required by this amendment is done.

* * *

I will post at least [five] more proposed amendments as I finish them.

Steven A. Sylwester
January 30, 2012

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Water Is Holy

I dedicate the following to my father Robert Alfred Sylwester on the occasion of his 85th birthday today, January 5, 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sylwester
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Sylwester/e/B001H6MKJA
http://www.corwin.com/authors/517501

(Jesus said) “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:43-48 NIV

Thanks be to God

Divine perfection “as your heavenly Father is perfect” is the stuff of God’s grace; it is unfathomable and inexplicable; it is beyond what is humanly possible. Yet Jesus tells us to be all of that: to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. What might that look like? In small part, I think it looks like the following: an attempt at grace upon grace.

Steven A. Sylwester

* * *

Water is essential for life — all life of any and every sort. Approximately 60 percent of the substance of a human body is water, and approximately 75 percent of human body waste is water. A healthy human adult consumes approximately 2.5 quarts of water every day. A human can survive for only four or five days without drinking water. Though nearly 75 percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water, 98 percent of that water is salt water, and is not fit for human consumption. It is estimated that less than one percent of all the water on Earth is potentially available for human consumption at any one time.

Many of the facts concerning water are startling and sobering. Consider:
http://www.waterinfo.org/resources/water-facts
http://www.lenntech.com/water-trivia-facts.htm
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/water_a_vital_nutrient?open
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/blbodyelements.htm

All in all, the most precious substance on Earth is potable fresh water — that water which is safe to drink and to use in cooking. Potable fresh water is more valuable than oil or gold or anything else. Yet it is the one substance that is free to all, or should be so. But dangers are ever present. For example, consider the dangers of mercury contamination: http://water.usgs.gov/wid/FS_216-95/FS_216-95.html
http://www1.american.edu/ted/MINAMATA.HTM
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-26953--,00.html
http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/sources.asp
Also, consider the dangers of corporate ownership of water rights and water sources:
http://www.alternativesmagazine.com/49/powdar.html
http://waterindustry.org/Water-Facts/world-water-5.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/VANOVEDR/
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/four-ways-to-play-the-global-water-crisis/1275
http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/nbc-no-deal-between-water-district-poland-spring-now
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2008/public_ownership_water_fenton.php

What follows is my proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that defines the term “public waters” and guarantees: “The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.” — that is: We The People.

* * *

The Constitution of The United States:
Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

Proposed Amendment: Water, Sun, and Underground Natural Resources Management
Re: Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2.

Section. 1.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all public waters in the United States. Public waters shall be all waters:
1) from groundwater springs or from headwaters, snow melt, or runoff that combine to form brooks, creeks, and streams that flow into an ocean or gulf or that become tributaries to rivers that flow into an ocean or gulf;
2) from aquifers accessed or potentially accessed by human-made wells and/or pumping mechanisms; and
3) from lakes of any size and any origin that serve as water sources for any life-sustaining human uses, including fishing and agricultural uses.
The States shall be responsible for all waters of any sort originating in the States until the waters first cross a State boundary or until the waters begin to define the boundary between two States or two nations, at which point the federal government shall become wholly responsible for those waters thereafter.

Section. 2.
Presiding jurisdiction and responsibility shall be to guarantee pure and clean water:
1) that is free from human-made or human-caused pollutants that are toxic or harmful to any living creatures and/or plant life in nature and
2) that is treatable to be made safe for human drinking, cooking, and hygiene in every case, including in the case of pregnant women, except when natural flooding or other polluting disasters occur.
The Congress shall provide remedy if necessary when pollutions occur in public waters and shall legislate the fines and punishments to be levied when municipalities and/or companies are found guilty of polluting. The Congress shall act when new scientific discovery reveals that existing standards are insufficient to protect good health and when new technology invention allows for the affordable improvement of existing standards.

Reckless and/or negligent polluting of public waters shall be a felony, and willful polluting of public waters for profit that causes either human death or at least a yearlong loss of use of a public waters source that had been potable for an established population of more than 5,000 people shall be a capital offense. Corporate executives shall be held personally accountable for any polluting of public waters done by their companies when foreknowledge can be proven.

Section. 3.
Municipal water treatments shall include only those substances and processes that are used solely for water purification purposes. No municipal water treatments of any sort that are intended to be either medicinal or health promoting as additives in human drinking water shall be allowed.

Section. 4.
Nowhere in the United States shall public waters be controlled by a private citizen or by a corporation that is not a municipality. Public access to free drinking water shall be a human right at all times in every municipality in the United States. The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.

Section. 5.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all known and unknown precious metals, minerals, ores, and energy-generating substances and gases that can be mined, drilled for, or otherwise taken from the Earth on the public lands, on the private lands, and in the territorial waters of the United States and its territories.

From public lands and territorial waters, as compensation for being the owner of the land and the ocean or gulf floor and for contracting extraction rights, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. Any contracting of extraction rights shall be conditional upon actual work being done, and contracts shall be wholly rescinded if no extractions are made during any 365-day period following the signing of the contract. Extraction rights shall not be given to foreign nations or to companies that do not have their corporate headquarters in the United States.

From private lands, as compensation for being Sovereign and Protector of those lands and of the public roadways, highways, and waterways used for all necessary transporting, the United States shall receive four percent (4%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. If access to the Earth beneath public lands is made underground from private lands, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means.

Section. 6.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from contracting extraction rights on public lands and in territorial waters as needed:
1) on environmental clean-ups that will create and protect pure and clean water;
2) on research to determine effective ways to replenish the depleting aquifers, especially the Ogallala Aquifer; and
3) on public waterworks projects that will enhance and protect the drinking water sources for established municipalities.

The United States shall spend all revenues earned from extractions made from private lands on the Nikola Tesla Project, which shall be a joint project with other cooperating nations to develop clean unlimited energy from the Earth and its higher atmosphere, especially from the ionosphere and the magnetosphere. When it is discovered how to harness controllable atmospheric electricity that can be used as a universal source of nonpolluting industrial power, the technology shall be freely shared among nations as a gift from the Creator to the whole world.

Section. 7.
A national building code shall require architectural design inclusion of dedicated efficient space for photo-voltaic system installations according to industry-established minimum space requirements for all new construction of residential, commercial, and governmental structures enclosing at least 1,000 square feet of heated space.

All existing structures shall be exempt as long as no remodeling involves any structural changes to existing roofs, excluding any structural changes that solely relate to replacing or installing gutters, low profile skylights, vents, satellite dishes, and/or roofing. Any structural additions to existing structures that add or alter roof-lines to accommodate additional square footage shall not be exempt from the code requirements.

Required shall be a minimum of 100 square feet of clear roof surface to accommodate solar modules or panels faced due south at an angle that matches the location’s latitude with an allowable 15- to 20-degree variation east or west from due south. The solar panels shall be located where they will not be shaded by trees or intruded upon by vents, chimneys, or other roof structure penetrations. An efficient accessible routing path from the roof array to a centralized inverter and then to the structure’s load center for the photo-voltaic system’s generated energy shall be required.


* * *

COMMENTARY:

Water is holy. As such, it should be sacred.