Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

I've used the mental model of math and theorems to reason about it. In this model, all laws have to be consistent with base axioms from the constitution (and common law maybe?)

I have come to realize that it is not a great analogy. The model breaks down when you realize that the law is not about "truth" (objectively true statements), but about "goodness" - what is right or wrong. That's the subjective component. Reading opinions help guide through the logic and what is thought of as good. Dissents are useful to glee into different perspectives. Some dissents are high tower rants though. Learn to discern the two.

Take a look at Marbury v. Madison[0] for the background on how SCOTUS gained the power of judicial review, i.e. power to strike down laws as unconstitutional. Judicial review is not granted in the constitution.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

I have caused some flame wars and/or been removed from dem leaning groups by asking if a candidate or the person speaking would be willing to use 100% of the power lent to them by my vote to enact their policy goals. I didn’t even expect it to be inflammatory, but apparently being frank about power being power is inappropriate.

The entire EU Commission (executive branch) is also not proportionally elected.

Nor is the European Parliament (legislative branch) proportionally elected.

Nothing about the EU is proportionally representative, but it's understood that it's a union of member states, not a union of people.

The United States was created similarly.

You can argue whether that's good or bad, but the dissonance between the US's original purpose -- an American Union -- and its current reality is the source of the wtfs.

Let's consider these then.

> Strike pardon power

What are you going to replace it with? What happens to someone who is convicted in a case where the law is both clear and clearly wrong? The courts can't help them when they actually did it but there are scores of laws that "innocent people" violate without knowing it on a regular basis. You need something else to address that if you're going to take away the thing that was intended to.

> First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”;

That sure sounds like the abolition of prosecutorial discretion, which is the same problem but worse. You would have to repeal the majority of existing regulations to keep the general population from overwhelming the prisons because existing laws are drafted to be overly broad to prevent "bad people" from getting away and then rely on prosecutorial discretion to prevent prosecutions when that's unreasonable.

The existing system sucks, but are people prepared for something that works very differently than that? Actual rule of law isn't flexible. People go to jail for breaking the law even when they're sympathetic and get off on technicalities even when they're unsympathetic.

> Abolish the electoral college

The electoral college is old and kind of silly and structurally very similar to the process for amending the constitution, thereby ensuring that the people who would have to do it continuously have the incentive not to.

That's why politicians complain about it -- they love to complain about things that are almost impossible to change because then people vote for them wanting it to change even though they can't actually change it, allowing them to run on it again next time having accomplished nothing.

> Congress may regulate money in politics

There are two ways you could try to do this.

The first is that they could only regulate money, but not in-kind contributions like a media outlet providing favorable coverage or a company sending employees to volunteer for a campaign. This would be completely pointless because they would obviously just use in-kind contributions instead and nothing would change.

The second is that you're passing the political speech version of the interstate commerce clause, because 100% of speech requires you to consume resources in order to do it. People talking about politics on the internet are contributing computer time, internet bandwidth and labor hours and their views favor one candidate over another. You would essentially be granting Congress the power to regulate political speech, which seems Very Bad.

> Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years.

This is like the pardon thing again. The executive is currently the only elected official with authority over executive agencies. Suppose the head of one of these independent agencies goes rogue. Who is supposed to rein them in? Creating something which is immune from public accountability seems bad.