{"id":46,"date":"2012-07-04T00:11:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T00:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beckypalmer.thecomputerguy.bz\/2012\/07\/civics-for-dummies\/"},"modified":"2015-11-10T03:58:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T03:58:25","slug":"civics-for-dummies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/?p=46","title":{"rendered":"Civics for Dummies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On this, the eve of our country’s birthday celebration, I am compelled to vent about the amazing lack of basic understanding of the way our government is designed that so many citizens seem to have. \u00a0So, in case you also have forgotten your 5th grade Civics and\/ or never watched Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings, here is the US Government in a nutshell:<\/span>
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\nThere are 3 branches of the US and all state governments- \u00a0Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.<\/span>
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\nExecutive is headed by the President or Governor. \u00a0They enforce the laws and in some cases have veto power. \u00a0They perform various ceremonial duties. \u00a0In the case of the President they are also the Chief Commander of the Armed Forces and head of foreign policy. \u00a0Legislative is the Congress and Senate. \u00a0Most states have the same 2 branches as well, but a few have only one. \u00a0They \u00a0are responsible for passing laws and are supposed to vote in the way that best serves the people in their district who elected them. \u00a0<\/span>Judicial is the court system. \u00a0Of course the Supreme Court is the highest court in the state\/ country. They interpret the laws based on the Constitution of the country\/ state.<\/span><\/span>
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\nJudicial seems to be the area of the most confusion. \u00a0In spite of what a lot of people seem to think Supreme Court justices are NOT supposed to rule based on popular opinion or even their own person opinion. \u00a0Their job is to determine if the law set before them to debate violates the Constitution or not. \u00a0Period. \u00a0End of story. \u00a0<\/span><\/span>
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\nHere in my adopted home state of Iowa we have a group called LUV, which stands for “Let Us Vote”. \u00a0This group successfully got 3 Iowa Supreme Court justices voted out of office some time back simply because they did not agree with those justices’ ruling on legalizing same sex marriages in the state. And they are back this year to try to get another judge voted out. \u00a0Clearly these people slept through 5th grade Civics. \u00a0If you don’t like a law you write your Congressman. \u00a0I didn’t think this was a difficult concept, but apparently I’m wrong. \u00a0I’ve even heard of people talking about voting out Supreme Court justices over Obamacare. \u00a0Now, I don’t care what your opinion on that ruling is, you tell me the last time you voted for a Supreme court justice??!?!? \u00a0I weep for my country.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this, the eve of our country’s birthday celebration, I am compelled to vent about the amazing lack of basic understanding of the way our government is designed that so many citizens seem to have. \u00a0So, in case you also have forgotten your 5th grade Civics and\/ or never watched Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings, here is the US Government… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-things-that-make-you-go-huh"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}