Massachusetts Two Step

[kandrathe]

Since the current governor of Massachusetts is a Democrat, the MA legislature is contemplating changing their Senate replacement law back (to how it was before Mit Romney) quickly to allow the governor to appoint a Kennedy replacement. Back in 2004, they argued that a special election to allow the voters to decide would be a more democratic process. During the Romney tenure, the legislature voted, in a display of pure partisanship, to change the law to deny him the ability to appoint a possible replacement for John Kerry when he assumed the presidency, but Kerry lost.

http://www.eagletribune.com/punews/local_s..._142002341.html

<blockquote>"Sec. 199. AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion." -- John Locke, 2nd Treatise of Civil Government</blockquote>

For me it smacks of a capricious abuse of the system to maintain power, and not just for Massachusetts, but for implementing a filibuster proof majority in the Federal Senate. Even though there are perhaps 15% of the citizens of the State registered as Republicans, even the remote chance of losing total power by democratic means motivates the tyrannical to seize the power from the whimsy of mere citizens.