Montanans Launch Recall of Senators Who Approved NDAA Military Detention
dailykos.com
dailykos.com
And there it is, plainly stated.
The media clearly doesn't want to talk about this, so the public would have to find out on its own, and then vote them out.
http://www.businessinsider.com/whys-the-media-shafting-ron-p...
Are you prepared to start punishing voters who approve state referendums that are held unconstitutional? Why not?
Guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) state:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
"Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members"
"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member."
The power to determine who is a member of Congress, and to remove a sitting member of Congress, is vested solely in the two houses of Congress. There is no precedent for removal of a member of Congress by any other mechanism, and several precedents to the contrary (e.g. attempts to impose term limits on Congressional candidates).
EDIT: I found that list of states here, but I actually don't know now how accurate it might be: http://www.ehow.com/how_2096900_recall-us-senator.html
Of course.. it's never been tested because a recall attempt of a US Senator in any state that allows for it has never progressed to the point where it'd have to have been implemented and so it may ultimately be illegal if the supreme courts says it is. However states have a certain right to withdraw from the union as a whole because of disputes like this because the union itself exists at the request of the member states themselves. We at least know that has been tried, but it didn't go very well...
"Even if we believed that States possessed as part of their original powers some control over congressional qualifica- tions, the text and structure of the Constitution, the relevant historical materials, and, most importantly, the “basic principles of our democratic system” all demonstrate that the Qualifications Clauses were intended to preclude the States from exercising any such power and to fix as exclusive the qualifications in the Constitution."
Footnote 20: "The Framers’ decision to reject a proposal allowing for States to recall their own representatives, see 1 Farrand 20, 217, reflects these same concerns."
"In light of the Framers’ evident concern that States would try to undermine the National Government, they could not have intended States to have the power to set qualifications. Indeed, one of the more anomalous consequences of petitioners’ argument is that it accepts federal supremacy over the procedural aspects of determining the times, places, and manner of elections while allowing the States carte blanche with respect to the substantive qualifications for membership in Congress."
"The Framers decided that the qualifications for service in the Congress of the United States be fixed in the Constitution and be uniform throughout the Nation. That decision reflects the Framers’ understanding that Members of Congress are chosen by separate constituencies, but that they become, when elected, servants of the people of the United States. They are not merely delegates appointed by separate, sovereign States; they occupy offices that are inte- gral and essential components of a single National Government. In the absence of a properly passed constitutional amendment, allowing individual States to craft their own qualifications for Congress would thus erode the structure envisioned by the Framers, a structure that was designed, in the words of the Preamble to our Constitution, to form a “more perfect Union.”"
That said, I wish them the best of luck. Even if it doesn't work for whatever reason, I think it's an important way for people to make their wishes known.