This should apply to members of the Supreme Court too!

Senator Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has fallen multiple times this year and is now using a wheelchair after a speaking freeze for roughly 28 seconds during a press conference on Wednesday. He is 81 years old.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., appeared confused during a vote on a defense appropriations bill Thursday, which prompted a fellow Democratic senator to step in. About 15 seconds into Feinstein’s speech, an aide whispered in her ear. Committee chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., then told Feinstein: “Just say aye.” “Aye,” Feinstein said. Feinstein is 90 years old.

From The Hill

Two teachers posted on The Hill. One of the most frequent questions we receive from students when we are teaching about the U.S. Constitution is: why are there minimum age requirements for federally elected offices, but not maximum age requirements?

Although we might be accused of ageism, we think there are legitimate reasons for considering amending the eligibility requirements in Articles I & II of the Constitution.

First, dementia and other cognitive declines increase with age, as many studies indicate. Although many older Americans function well at older ages, federal elected officials are not immune from Alzheimer’s and other cognitive issues. We know that there have been cases in the past where elected officials have become unable to perform their duties, such that their staff members have to compensate. For example, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who served in the Senate until the age of 100, had to have help with everything from what questions to ask in hearings to physically walking to the floor of the Senate. His chief of staff became his office’s chief decision-maker, which means that an unelected staff person was making decisions for an elected member of Congress. This threatens democratic legitimacy.

Second, although there have been more people elected to Congress in recent election cycles who are under 40, membership in both chambers is still disproportionately much older than the American population. According to the Congressional Research Service, the average age of House members is 58.4 years and that of Senate members is 64.3 years. By comparison, the median age of U.S. residents is 38.2, and nearly half of the population is a member of the generation Z (born 1997 or later) or millennial (born 1981-1996) generations.There’s no denying our new climate reality: We must rethink disaster managementThe Supreme Court’s ‘anything goes’ attitude on the death penalty

There are important reasons to want more younger Americans to serve in public office. First, political science research has found that citizens feel higher levels of external efficacy—the idea that government listens to your concerns and reacts to them—when their representatives look more like them, which is called descriptive representation. Therefore, we could expect higher levels of efficacy and participation among younger Americans if there were more of them in Congress. Additionally, a maximum age would allow younger elected officials with a better understanding of contemporary issues to make decisions on issues like online privacy or the impact of the student loan burden on the nation’s economy. Mark Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony in 2018, in which he infamously had to explain how the internet works to senators, likely would have gone very differently had there been a few younger Americans asking him questions.

The same arguments also apply to the presidency. Although we’ve had younger presidents, like Barack Obama, elected in this century, the last two presidents—Trump and Biden—are of an entirely different generation than most Americans. With the possibility that they could face each other in a rematch in 2024, when Trump is 77 and Biden is 82, the question raised by our survey is applicable: how old is too old?

David McLennan is a professor of political science at Meredith College and director of the Meredith Poll. Whitney Ross Manzo is an associate professor of political science at Meredith College and associate director of the Meredith Poll

A constitutional amendment is needed.

The fight to reform or abolish the electoral college began almost as soon as it was created, by those who created it. In 1802, Alexander Hamilton, one of the original architects of the electoral college, was so displeased with how it was being executed that he helped draft a constitutional amendment to fix it. Since then there have been more than 700 efforts to reform or abolish it, according to the Congressional Research Service reported the Washington Post

In a 2020 Gallup poll heading into the 2020 presidential election, three in five Americans favored amending the U.S. Constitution to replace the Electoral College with a popular vote system, marking a six-percentage point uptick since April 2019. This preference for electing the president based on who receives the most votes nationwide is driven by 89% of Democrats and 68% of independents. Far fewer Republicans, 23%, share this view, as 77% of them support keeping the current system in which the candidate with the most votes in the Electoral College wins the election.

George W. Bush in Bush vs Gore won his election in the Electoral College but lost the popular vote. Donald Trump won the presidency despite getting fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton.

The January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol would not have happened if there was a popular vote system.  There won’t be any fake electors. The Vice President’s job of ceremonial counting of electoral votes would be eliminated.

There are more than 80 countries that select their president by direct vote.  That includes countries in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. If the election was simply by popular vote California, the north Atlantic seaboard, some “liberal” parts of Florida, and the Seattle metro area would likely determine the presidency.  That is a good thing.  It is where most of us live. The Red Area Features A Total Population Greater Than The Grey – Coast Contact (wordpress.com)

President Joe Biden is bragging about the lower inflation that has been going down since April of this year. That is a good thing BUT what was the cause of that inflation?

There is a lot of debate about the cause of current inflation. People have blamed things like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and corporate price gouging for current high rates of inflation.

Despite all the controversy, according to Fortune, economists generally agree on some of the causes behind the high inflation that has defined the economy over the last several months:

• The pandemic shifted consumer demand away from services toward goods, which left producers unable to keep up with demand.
• Factory closures from early in the pandemic reduced supply just as demand was rising, which sent prices up even further.
• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in oil prices, which increased the cost of both manufacturing and shipping, while also forcing up the price of wheat and other commodities.

The improving inflation numbers are great but it was not the result of anything the president did. It was the result of the increased interest rates thanks to the Federal Reserve.

June CPI Report Key Stats

• CPI rose 0.2% for the month versus 0.1% in May.
• Core CPI rose 0.2% after rising 0.4% in May.
• CPI rose 3.0% year over year after rising 4.0% in May.
• Core CPI rose 4.8% year over year after rising 5.3% in May.

What great country we are. We have decided to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs. I am horrified!

Cluster bombs are a type of weapon that is designed to disperse smaller bombs over a large area. They are also known as cluster munitions, with the smaller bombs referred to as submunitions or bomblets. They are banned by 120 nations.

Watch the news and listen to government spokes people justify their use. Perhaps we should provide Ukraine with mustard gas or perhaps a few small nuclear weapons.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday defended what he said was a “difficult decision” to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, a move the administration said was key to the fight and buttressed by Ukraine’s promise to use the controversial bombs carefully.

The decision comes on the eve of the NATO summit in Lithuania, where Biden is likely to face questions from allies on why the U.S. would send a weapon into Ukraine that more than two-thirds of alliance members have banned because it has a track record for causing many civilian casualties.

Washington Post opinion piece response

Here’s why supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions would be a terrible mistake

By Patrick Leahy and Jeff Merkley

Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, is a former U.S. senator from Vermont. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, is a U.S. senator from Oregon who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee.

A few weeks after the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, reports from the battlefield revealed that Russian troops were using cluster munitions against Ukrainian targets. This news prompted a top U.S. official, as well as observers from dozens of other countries and humanitarian organizations, to denounce Moscow’s use of a weapon widely recognized as causing disproportionate civilian casualties.

Yet President Biden has now approved providing cluster munitions to Ukraine. This is a serious mistake.

We voted for billions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine and strongly believe we must continue to help the Ukrainian people defend themselves against Russian aggression. But supplying Kyiv with cluster munitions would come at an unsupportable moral and political price. Knowing that these weapons cause indiscriminate terror and mayhem, both of us — like many others in the international community — have worked for years to end their use.

Cluster munitions, such as land mines, undeniably offer some battlefield advantages — yet using them would compound the already devastating impact of the war on civilians and Ukrainian troops, with effects lasting for years to come.

Unlike Russian President Vladimir Putin, the United States subscribes to the laws of war and the importance of minimizing civilian casualties, and our support for Ukraine must be guided by such principles. Biden has recognized that this effort is about standing up for sovereignty, freedom and democracy in the face of horrific war crimes justified with Putin’s lies.

The impact of cluster munitions on innocent civilians persists for weeks, months, even years, sometimes long after a conflict ends. These weapons are designed to disperse swarms of small submunitions, known as “bomblets,” over large areas, causing widespread death and destruction. To make matters worse, they often fail to explode as designed. Russia’s use of cluster munitions in Ukraine killed and wounded hundreds of civilians between February and July 2022. In Laos and Vietnam, some of the tens of millions of unexploded U.S. cluster munitions deployed more than 50 years ago continue to maim and kill civilians. As senators, we traveled to Vietnam, where we witnessed firsthand the devastating and long-lasting effects these weapons have had on civilians.

Modern U.S. cluster munitions are no exception. They are scattered by the thousands, and while they have lower dud rates than in the past, those that fail to detonate can be activated by anyone who encounters them, whether a child or a Ukrainian soldier or anyone else. That is why 123 countries, including 23 out of 31 NATO members, have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use and transfer of these weapons. While the United States is not a party to the convention, since 2003 the U.S. military used them only once, in Yemen, in 2009.

Since then, Congress, in a law one of us wrote, has prohibited the transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate greater than 1 percent, which would restrict the number of unexploded bomblets that could endanger civilians long after the end of a conflict. Previously, this was also the Pentagon’s own policy. The law also stipulates that any agreement pertaining to the transfer of cluster munitions must specify that the munitions will not be used where civilians are known to be present. Any cluster munitions provided to Ukraine would exceed the 1 percent failure rate, and in providing Ukraine with cluster munitions the White House would therefore be acting contrary to that law.

The United States is by far the world’s largest donor for the clearance of land mines, cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance, having contributed $213 million in 2022 alone. We have worked to increase Ukraine’s capabilities to clear Russian mines and unexploded munitions, and this costly, dangerous work will need to continue for decades.

Sending cluster munitions to Ukraine would not only reverse decades of U.S. policy and practice. It would also kill more civilians and exacerbate the very problem we are seeking to address when we provide millions of dollars for ordnance clearance. And it would go against the two-thirds of NATO members and other allies and partners who are party to the convention, and whose support is critical to our collective defense of Ukraine. The last thing we need is to risk a rupture with key allies over a weapon that the United States should be leading the global effort to prohibit.

Finally, providing cluster munitions to Kyiv would erode the moral advantage held by Ukraine and its supporters since the start of the war. While Russia has used cluster munitions in its barbaric onslaught, Putin’s propagandists could use our actions to further discredit Ukraine and its allies among nonaligned countries.

We must continue to provide Ukraine with the military, economic and humanitarian aid it needs to persevere, but in a manner that is worthy of the United States.