Subject: Re: "We need a 4th branch of Gov't"
What problem are you trying to solve, then?

The failure of constitutional democracy. I thought we had some basic laws which are very hard to change that live in the constitution, among which were no emoluments, the first, fourth, fifth and ninth amendments. We apparently also have/had laws that the president couldn't unilaterally declare arbitrarily large tariffs. I sorta thought we had laws that the president couldn't threaten american cities and states with the military, that the military was actually precluded from operating within the US. I hoped the president setting up his own privately directed "police" force complete with unmarked cars and masks and authorized to shoot American citizens with impunity must be illegal, and I thought at least the 4th amendment prevented that and warrantless forced entries into the homes in the US.

Having naively (I realize now) thought all the above, when impeachment/conviction was not used against a president doing all those things, I assumed it was a failure of the impeachment process. Further it looked like the impeachment process had failed because it had not been contemplated that with party coordination a corrupt president AND a corrupt senate and house could be elected.

And so I thought, simplest fix, have a second path for impeachment/conviction like response. No need for a 4th branch, it could be the judiciary doing it.

The thing I take from albaby's response is that, essentially, the theory of the strong executive is basically right and the ability for 70 million American's to choose a government that operates in a way that a different 70 million American's believe is actually illegal is a feature, not a bug, of the system. So I had thought the problem with judicial enforcement was it was too slow, the president could do all sorts of illegal stuff and not be caught up short for a year at a time due to the way the judiciary worked. And I thought in a RICO inspired moment, if the judiciary could see that the president was an habitual criminal we could write a mechanism into place to yank that guy. Maybe it would take 6 months for them to do that, but it would be a once and for all solution instead of just having to spend an entire presidential term allowing illegal things to be consistently proposed and implemented for 1/2 a year to a year at a time, until each individual act was slowly taken down by the judiciary. Sort of a "3 strikes and your out" rule for the president.

Is there a good reason we should have to put up with a president who violates the constitution and the laws instead of changing them?

R: