It is clear that at the Federal level there are some absolutely essential reforms required to our government. There are two that I am think of this morning, one that requires a constitutional amendment and one which does not.

Requiring that we change our constitution is the manner in which we impeach presidents. It is clear in a party driven political system no matter the clear evidence of crimes a political party simply will not impeach its own leader as long as that leader command significant support from the party’s base of voters. General election voters are irrelevant to the calculation as politician understand that must survive the primary before facing the wider pool of voters. As it currently stands impeachment is a dead letter. The solution would be to remove the trial and conviction phase of the process from the politicians to a body more immune to the current political winds such as the Supreme Court. Impeachment would require a simple majority vote in both houses and then be tried before the Supreme Court for conviction and removal. But as I said this requires a Constitutional Amendment, not easy.

The other topic is reforming the Supreme Court. The constitution requires that the United States have a Supreme Court but does not specify it make-up or operation leaving that to the congress. A suggestion I have read and favor is that instead of having a 9-justice court where all the justices participate and rule on every case and thus creating an incentive to pack the court towards one political philosophy or the other expand the court, say to fifteen to reduces the load on each justice, and then every case would be heard by a panel selected randomly for that case. While the larger court could have a partisan tilt, no one could be assured that the panel that hears the case would reflect that. This would reduce the arms race in stacking the court and in running to the court to decide every major issue.