[AnthonyMouse]

> Five Constitutional amendments we need

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> What happens to someone who is convicted in a case where the law is both clear and clearly wrong?

Same thing that happens most of the time now. They serve their sentence unjustly. If it’s a serious issue, the Congress can act.

> You need something else

You don’t. Most societies don’t. Pardon power is an anachronism nobody would argue for if it weren’t already here.

> sounds like the abolition of prosecutorial discretion sounds like the abolition of prosecutorial discretion

What? No. This is a unitary-executive thing. Prosecutorial discretion is unrelated.

> second is that you're passing the political speech version of the interstate commerce clause

Lots of thought has gone into this. One can write it competently. At the very least, the First Amendment would still stand.

> executive is currently the only elected official with authority over executive agencies. Suppose the head of one of these independent agencies goes rogue

They’re not! SCOTUS just confirmed this for the Fed. We have a mishmash of authorities, with the Congress clearly wanting some agencies to retain some independence. Most statute creating independent agencies contemplates how members may be fired. If the Congress wants to create a judicial-type independent agency, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be able to properly—the executive already magics these up with administrative courts.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Same thing that happens most of the time now. They serve their sentence unjustly.

Shouldn't we be making problems better instead of worse?

> If it’s a serious issue, the Congress can act.

Does Congress have the authority to pardon someone?

Also, do you really expect that to happen even if they could? Congress can't agree on anything by design.

> This is a unitary-executive thing. Prosecutorial discretion is unrelated.

They're pretty related. Prosecutorial discretion is Congress passing a law and the executive deciding not to enforce it. How different is it to Congress passing a law and the executive deciding not to implement it?

It's the check provided by the other elected branch. The ability to say no.

> Lots of thought has gone into this. One can write it competently. At the very least, the First Amendment would still stand.

It's not a drafting issue. If someone can buy a TV network or a website with a lot of readers and then use it to say what they want, money buys speech. If someone with access to an audience can't say what they want, you don't have a First Amendment anymore, because having an audience is a prerequisite to exercising speech which is imposed by reality rather than the law, and there is no way to get one without spending money or money-equivalents like labor/time. The concepts are directly in opposition. The government can't simultaneously regulate speech and not at the same time.

> They’re not! SCOTUS just confirmed this for the Fed.

And that decision was a little nuts. So if the public wants the Fed chair out, there is no practical democratic process that can do it?

> We have a mishmash of authorities, with the Congress clearly wanting some agencies to retain some independence.

Which is a violation of checks and balances. It's Congress setting something up and trying to tell the other branches they can't stop it. That shouldn't happen, and the existing instances of it happening are also bad.

There are times when you want Congress to act as a check on the President, but there are also times when you want the President to act as a check on Congress.

[markhahn]

the Executive is required to obtain consent of Congress to appoint principal officers; why not just require consent to fire them?

[AnthonyMouse]

This is the "make repealing laws as hard as passing them" mistake. You want the process for taking government action to be deliberative because the cost of doing the wrong thing is orders of magnitude worse than the cost of doing nothing.

Using the same process to stop something that has already been set in motion is getting the equation backwards. When there is a steamroller on its way to flatten an elementary school full of children you want the emergency stop button to be accessible rather than bureaucratic.