Majority Rule

ALEXANDRIA, VA. -- In honor of Constitution Day, which was celebrated yesterday, allow me to dispel the most popular myth about our government: In America, the majority rules.Wrong answer. One of the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution is that democracy is not an unmitigated good. That's why we have a Bill of Rights -- which gives individuals and minorities some protection against the tyranny of the majority. For, as James Madison recognized, a democracy can be just as despotic as any other form of government.

There has been a lot of discussion in these pages about a recent statement on religious liberty issued by Maryland's Catholic bishops. Unfortunately, the discussion has ignored most of what the bishops had to say. It has focused almost exclusively on the Catholic Church's opposition to same-sex marriage — an issue the state legislature may revisit in its next session. Let us leave that controversy aside for the moment and consider what the bishops actually said. The bishops' statement, "The Most Sacred of All Property," takes its title from an essay by James Madison.

DURING THE last full decade of South Africa's apartheid in the 1980s, neighboring Zimbabwe was often hailed as proof that black majority rule could work. More recently, though, it has become an example of how unwise policies practiced by an unchallenged, aging leader can throw a country into hopelessness.This situation has been only too common in post-colonial Africa. Eventually, unhappiness swept aside such founding presidents as Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda and Malawi's Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

Every year, more than 60 federal agencies issue thousands of new regulations covering every sector of the American economy. The Small Business Administration estimates the cumulative costs of these regulations at more than $1 trillion annually, or more than $10,000 per household per year. These regulations are legally binding, yet they emerge from unelected officials in regulatory agencies; Congress never has to vote to approve them. Over the last few decades, on average, between 30 and 40 of the new final regulations issued each year have been considered "major," with impacts of more than $100 million.

Tea partiers claim their anger and violent rage is because the government isn't listening ("Protests out of bounds," March 26). Let's review the facts. In the 2008 election, President Obama vowed to reform health care. Not only was he elected, but Democrats were elected as the majority in both houses of Congress. Health care reform passes both houses and was signed into law by Mr. Obama. Democracy in action! Maybe the tea partiers should check the Constitution. What I see is the best of what the Constitution stands for -- popular sovereignity, majority rule, separtion of powers, and checks and balances.

MANY Americans think the primary cause of gridlock in Congress is the inability of a majority to agree on action. The real problem is more basic.In the Senate, majority rule is becoming the exception rather than the rule.Week after week, we see as many as 59 of the 100 senators ready to act on legislation -- to pass or defeat it. But Senate rules permit a minority of 41 or fewer to filibuster -- to prevent the majority from voting at all. To stop a filibuster, 60 votes are needed.A minority -- sometimes one senator -- can demand ransom in exchange for providing the 60th vote; often, the price is either watered-down legislation or "pork."

ON A CONTINENT that has had more than its share of turmoil and disasters, South Africa continues to beam a ray of hope. Granted, much of the euphoria of the first days of majority rule in the spring of 1994 has been tempered by the hard facts of real life. But President Nelson Mandela governs by pragmatism and South African voters are proving to be surprisingly astute, considering that the country was long deprived of real democracy.The recent local elections are a case in point. The ANC rallied, gaining about 60 percent of the vote, to no one's surprise.

WASHINGTON -- Using a century-old Supreme Court case as a model, lawyers for 15 Democratic representatives and the League of Women Voters filed a lawsuit yesterday challenging the constitutionality of a new rule in the House of Representatives that requires a three-fifths vote to approve any increase in the income tax rate."

FORMER SEN. Charles McC. Mathias is a member of Action, Not Gridlock! (ANG!) -- an organization calling for an end to the filibuster in the Senate.The filibuster is the parliamentary maneuver that allows a minority to kill a bill by preventing a vote on it. Filibusterers refuse to stop talking and give up the floor. Senate-type bodies have had rules allowing such at least since Caesar's day. It takes 60 votes in today's 100-member U.S. Senate to shut filibusterers LTC up and sit them down.

IF THE Senate operated by majority rule, Congress would have passed a lobbying reform law this week and a campaign finance reform law last week. It also would have adopted the first major telecommunications reform law in 50 years, reined in the giveaway of taxpayer-owned gold to private mining companies and perhaps adopted a compromise health-care reform plan.Each of these bills is now dead for Congress, because a filibuster frenzy has made majority rule the exception rather than the rule in the Senate.

Tea partiers claim their anger and violent rage is because the government isn't listening ("Protests out of bounds," March 26). Let's review the facts. In the 2008 election, President Obama vowed to reform health care. Not only was he elected, but Democrats were elected as the majority in both houses of Congress. Health care reform passes both houses and was signed into law by Mr. Obama. Democracy in action! Maybe the tea partiers should check the Constitution. What I see is the best of what the Constitution stands for -- popular sovereignity, majority rule, separtion of powers, and checks and balances.

Tis the season of commencement speeches. At bigger schools we'll look for the celebrity speechmakers and listen for sound bites from the Bills - Clinton or Cosby - along with an assortment of CEOs and novelists and local politicians. Most of their talks inspire, but there has come to be an underlying message that links education, graduation and material success. In our excitement for the new grads, are we putting the emphasis in the wrong place? As we celebrate, we calculate the value of a high school or college degree: We compare tuition with the expected wages and future positions as if that's the transaction in full.

NEW YORK -- Wall Street won a major victory yesterday when the Supreme Court ruled that people who lost money on initial public stock offerings in the late-1990s Internet boom could not sue their brokerages under U.S. antitrust laws. The Supreme Court sided with investment banks that had been accused of conspiring to inflate IPO prices, ruling 7-1 that lawsuits alleging initial public offering abuses have to be brought under securities rather than antitrust statutes. The ruling reversed a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that had allowed the class action suit to move forward.

Lordy, Lordy, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley wasn't that bad a mayor of Baltimore, was he? You'd think so if you read attorney Warren Brown's now controversial letter to black Baltimore mayoral candidates last week. Brown sent the letter to current Mayor Sheila Dixon and several other black candidates who have announced they will run against her in this year's election. "Surely you must recognize," the never-bashful defense attorney wrote, "that with five Blacks pursuing this office, a member of the (white)

There's growing understanding that a basic democratic principle is not being honored in Maryland. Earlier this month, incumbent Annapolis Mayor Ellen Moyer won another term with 46 percent of the vote while the other candidates split the remainder between them, with Gilbert Renaut at 36 percent and George Kelly at 18 percent. Donnell is communications director for FairVote - The Center for Voting and Democracy, based in Takoma Park. His e-mail is ryan@fairvote.org.

Tribune Co. expressed cautious optimism yesterday that it would succeed in overturning a tax ruling costing the company $1 billion, even as its stock price fell to its lowest level in nearly four years. Still, executives pledged to immediately pay the back taxes and interest to the Internal Revenue Service stemming from two transactions carried out by the former Times Mirror Co., before its takeover by Tribune in 2000. As the stock slid by more than 4 percent yesterday to its lowest level since November 2001, Tribune said the payment won't require the sale of assets because $250 million had been set aside and additional money was raised last month through bond financing.

The constitutional proposal that President F. W. de Klerk of South Africa had his National Party endorse sounds appropriate to Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia. And that, of course, is Mr. de Klerk's point. He heads a country of divided population that he thinks should be governed by recognizing, rather than attempting to deny, the divisions.The ideas of a three-person presidency and coalition government and one legislative house elected by proportional representation do not require close analysis here.

The bloody assault Sunday on South African church-goers was a repulsive piece of symbolism. Bad enough that a church was selected as a target in the continued civil strife as South Africa moves haltingly toward racial justice. But predominantly white St. James Church, affiliated with an evangelistic Anglican denomination, has been open to all races for 25 years and reached out to a nearby black township. This was not a random attack such as has been marring the efforts by majorities of blacks and whites to create a constitutional, multi-racial society.

Foe of abortion shows disregard for democracy Stephen Peroutka is not only the chairman of the National Pro-Life Action Center but a Maryland lawyer ("Roberts' words give abortion foes reason to be wary," Opinion/Commentary, Aug. 9). Yet his column shows that the foundations of anti-abortion beliefs are truly anti-American because they are anti-democratic. Mr. Peroutka asserts that "We" - by which he mean America - "declared that the laws of nature and nature's God take precedence over unjust decrees, even when those decrees are wrapped in the guise of law."

WASHINGTON - Hearings are under way before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the first of President Bush's resubmitted judicial nominations that Democrats blocked last year. There are signs that opponents are no more willing to swallow them now than they were then. Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has expressed hope that a compromise can be reached. But with the Republicans holding a 10-8 edge on the committee, it's likely that the names of most or all of the Bush appointees to federal appellate courts will be sent to the floor again.