Saturday, November 19, 2016

Change of pace for a moment

For a change of pace, let's see how many of these questions people know the correct answers to.

How many branches of government are there?
How many members are there in the House and Senate?
Who’s third in line for the presidency?
Describe the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
What are the term limits for the American president and the representatives/senators?


You probably had an easy time of the first. Executive, legislative, and judicial. There are checks and balances built into the way these three branches function so that we have a fairly level system.

Easy answer on the Senate--fifty states, two Senators each, so 100 Senate members. The House is tougher. The number of voting representatives in the House is fixed by law at no more than 435, proportionally representing the population of the fifty states.

The line of succession is President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, President Pro Tem of the Senate, Secretary of State. If we ever had to go further than that, we'd be in BIG TROUBLE. (LOL)

The Bill of Rights consists of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, while we declared our independence with the other document. Do you know the Preamble to the Constitution? We used to have to memorize it in seventh grade.

The President now has a limit of two terms (after it appeared that FDR could serve forever.) Congresscritters have no term limits and can return over and over. There's a movement afoot to slap term limits on them, as well. Now, why did the Founding Fathers not put limits on them? They had NO IDEA there would ever be such a thing as a career politician! To them, it made sense that someone would put himself out there for a few years and serve the country, and then return to his huge land holdings to manage his business affairs. They couldn't have envisioned the way it works today.

How do you feel about the Electoral College? Never mind . . . don't need a flamewar. LOL