Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Constitution: Twenty fifth Amendment

From Wekipedia:

The Twenty-fifth Amendment (Amendment XXV) to the United States Constitution deals with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities.


We all know that Vice Presidents are expendable and unpredictable.  Presidents on the other hand are tough old birds.  Take Regan for example, even when his cabinet was wondering if he had lost his mind and because erratic behavior for him  was normal, they all hesitated to invoke the twenty fifth.  They watched him closely for two days but he got all excited that everyone was gathered around and asking him simple questions that he snapped out of his dementia and not one person could tell the difference from the normal old Ronnie.  When he was shot, he could not write a letter to invoke the Twenty Fifth Amendment and VP Bush was flying in from Texas so he could not write a letter to invoke it (because the lawyers and the writers in the White House were not with the Vice President) so Ronnie is unconscious on the operating table and the United States did not have anyone at the helm.  It has been that way since.

To fix the Vice President thing requires the president to appoint someone and a majority of both houses needs to approve the appointee.  Most times that would be a simple order for congress but not now.  We need an amendment dealing with congressional disabilities.  We could call it "The Final Resolution".  It would basically state that if congress cannot be nice and accomplish something important, they are open season for the bow hunters. 

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