Right to Life Caucus Organizing Convention

[TJ in Oregon]

x TJ in Cleve

[TJ in Oregon]

Some general thoughts on organization:

1. We'll need a chairman. What do you guys think the term length of the chair position should be? Four months? Two months? Six months?

2. Maybe we should have a vice-chair. I don't think it makes sense to have a whole bunch of officers when we have a grand total of six people so far. It also doesn't make any sense to have regional chairs since we have 4 Mideasterners and 2 Southerners and no one else.

3. The RPP question: I agree it makes sense to take advantage of the new caucus law, even if it does limit our membership to RPP'ers. We could also have a bylaws provision proclaiming honorary membership to people from other parties if they wish to join.

4. After reading the Senate Bill, I believe we have the ability to endorse other candidates beyond our official membership by this provision:

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Thus, I think we ought to allow non-members to seek our endorsement (perhaps we could automatically grant this to honorary members if the situation were to present itself).

Thoughts?

[TJ in Oregon]

People are only allowed to officially join one caucus. Though in general, I agree, we obviously should only endorse pro-life candidates.

[TJ in Oregon]

Also, note that to officially be registered in a caucus, you must register as such in the New Register Thread rather than just stating your membership here. There is some contention about whether or not this is required, however, our RG has made it clear he intends to require doing so (and the law itself is somewhat ambiguous about it).

[TJ in Oregon]

What I was thinking of doing was writing into our bylaws an equal status granted to anyone who wishes to be a member of the caucus regardless of whether or not they are officially recognized by the RG. We could then write into our bylaws that we would automatically give our endorsement to any members of the caucus regardless of whether or not the RG recognizes them as such. We could let anyone join as an "honorary member" or "observer" just as a title while making no distinction whatsoever inside the caucus between them and registered members.

It would allow us to create a caucus that is functionally bi-partisan yet afforded the same rights as a party caucus. The only catch would be that we would need to keep at least 5 RPP'ers in the caucus and follow any guidelines the RPP enacts. Most of the RPP wants to have officially bipartisan caucuses anyways so they would be very unlikely to enact a rule to close the loophole.

[TJ in Oregon]

Would I need to post in the New Register Thread if I were only an "honorary member"?

Well, maybe

The law is mildly ambiguous about that but I think it's implied meaning is that members need to be of one party. You may try it and see what happens but I wouldn't bother. I think with the current law it would work best to keep track of membership ourselves, besides having the RPP members register there so we can become "established".

Anyone else have thoughts on how we should handle this?

[TJ in Oregon]

I'll run for Chairman, though I think it may be a good idea to write our bylaws first before electing a chairman. Perhaps a platform as well?

[TJ in Oregon]

I made a draft of some bylaws. What do you guys think?

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[TJ in Oregon]

Membership List (10 members) as of 8 December 2011:

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We still need at least one more RPP member to register in the New Register Thread to become an “established” caucus!

[TJ in Oregon]

Membership List (12 members) as of 10 December 2011:

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[TJ in Oregon]

Updated to address Clarence’s concern. Does anyone else have issues with it?

All that’s left to do now is the platform and ratifying everything.

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[/quote]

[TJ in Oregon]

As it has been 24 hours with no objections... I will confirm that Senator-elect TJ in Cleve has been elected Chairman! I will leave it to the Chairman to confirm me as Vice Chair as if I did it tha twould raise some eyebrows....

I will happily confirm that clarence has been elected Vice Chairman

[TJ in Oregon]

Voting is now open to ratify the bylaws. This will be a 48 hour vote. Their approval will require a majority.

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[TJ in Oregon]

Aye

[TJ in Oregon]

Could I be, like, a honorary member? Or can you only be in one caucus at a time?

You can only be registered in one caucus at a time, but we'll take anyone who is pro-life and wants to join regardless of offical registration status.

[TJ in Oregon]

The bylaws have been passed with 6 AYES and 0 NAYS.

[TJ in Oregon]

Here’s a rough draft of a platform. It could probably use some more work, though I suspect if we wanted to include more detail it could end up almost infinitely long.

Comments?

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[TJ in Oregon]

I wish to join this caucus.

Register in the "New Register" thread.

[TJ in Oregon]

Is there anyone who thinks we should not include opposition to the death penalty?

[TJ in Oregon]

Well, capital punishment has already been abolished in Atlasia if that means anything. For some reason, this forum has a particularly strong majority against the death penalty. I'm not exactly sure why that is.

But the question before us is whether or not we ought to include opposition to the death penalty in our bylaws. I would say that, unless we have something awfully close to unanimous consent, we ought not delve into that issue. It's already been outlawed and it's going to stay that way under any circumstances I forsee. I don't think there's an advantage to having this argument, unless our goals transcend beyond Atlasia and into the cold world of real life....

.....but then maybe it's a discussion worth having.

[TJ in Oregon]

For the points that have been raised, I fixed the spelling of euthanasia, and changed the word “restricting” to “requiring” in the sentence about parental notification laws. I did reference the cloning of human embryos under the Stem Cell Research section, does anyone think it deserves its own section? I kept it to human cloning, do we want to go into animal cloning too? I didn’t think it was relevant to this set of issues really but I’m certainly open to other thoughts.

As for capital punishment, I added a section on it. I intentionally tried to stay clear of writing anything that could be turned into a foreign policy discussion—I simply don’t think we ought to go there. In our bylaws, we only have specified the process for amending the platform, not for writing it to begin with. I think this would work best if we treat each point as an amendment and vote on each separately (granting the possible outcome that the platform will be passed in general but each point could fail individually). I think that would be the best way of handling the capital punishment issue.

Any other thoughts?

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[TJ in Oregon]

I'm still not clear on what you mean by people who forfeit the value of their lives in assisted suicide.

Yeah, that was also a bad sentence. Do you like the new one better?

[TJ in Oregon]

Membership List (16 members) as of 27 December 2011:

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[TJ in Oregon]

Since it’s been a few days, most people are back from Christmas or at least back to their computers, and no one has raised any new points, we ought to vote on the platform and then, if no one else has any other business, close the convention.

Because of the minor argument over capital punishment, I’ll introduce each piece as an amendment to the now empty platform and we’ll vote on each. The vote will require a simple majority and will last for 72 hours.

Current Platform:

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Amendment 1:

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Amendment 2:

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Amendment 3:

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Amendment 4:

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[TJ in Oregon]

Amendment 1: Aye
Amendment 2: Aye
Amendment 3: Aye
Amendment 4: Aye