 we now come to the specific articles that form the bulk of this constitutional document. These are articles through which a government is authorized to exist. The written provisions address how the various elements of government will receive powers from we the people and are both granted specified authorities and denied actions beyond stated limitations. These articles set a government in order, assigning duties upon its parts to fulfill the stated purposes of the larger agreement. This new government is also to function within the self-governing purposes documented in the preamble. This addresses the agreements by we the people that brings the U.S. government into existence. Of specific note, this article is not some separate authorization providing absolute powers and suggesting limitations upon a ruling group of government leaders. That is not the written intent, nor the expressed will of the people in whose name this document is signed. I would not have to mention this, except for the common and ongoing challenges to citizen ownership of this nation. Our personal sovereignty has been further challenged by the use of internal processes that interfere with or even deny representation to we the people. Part of the purpose for this course is to empower the future citizens to more perfectly govern themselves, to have a common knowledge of a base of our founding documents so that they can come into union and assuring that the legal government of the United States effectively serves its people in accord with its constituting instrument. The first article in our agreement is focused on initiating, empowering, and limiting a legislative body within this new government. And this body is given legislative purpose in accord with the agreements with we the people. The purpose for there being legislature is to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. The provisions within this article must be seen as our means to meet our own specific and public purpose for having a legislature, our purpose, as we the people in coming to agreement. And as is presented, ask yourself if you can honestly say that you are agreed as part of the people of the United States upon the provisions of this article. That is more than your personal approval. It is a general agreement that can only be effective if it includes your friends and classmates. Section 1 assigns all legislative powers to the two houses of Congress. The term legislation addresses the passing or enabling of laws. Laws are instructions or directions by government that are to be honored by people or that pursue the legal purposes of government. This has to start with the common law as a source of legislation. It is acceptance of laws that forbid common law crimes and misdemeanors. It includes general acceptance of tort law, forbidding us to injure one another. And it includes the institutions of justice, such as the courts and police. It includes having all of these serve us. It also includes common law and support of business, the laws of contract and agency. Legislative power is also limited in that it cannot otherwise do what people do not have the ability to do or to authorize. It has to first recognize the authority to do things as citizens before it can do it in our name. Our government, as created and empowered under authority of this document, has only the powers and authorities that we can delegate to it. Our immediate and ongoing violation of these principles is seen in the passage of laws that hold people accountable, even though the laws are written to be unclear in effect or so complicated and involved that we the people are not expected to understand their provisions. Consider our tax code, not thousands of pages in length. Do our congressmen read and understand all the details of such a massive code? Are each of us expected to read and understand it? What chance is there that this tax code could represent your purposes in operating our government? Here is the founding principle. If it does not represent you as a sovereign citizen, it is not going to represent you as part of we the people. We have drifted a long way from having a government that represents a sovereign people. Authority to legislate is not granted to see to government determined purposes, only to see to the agreed purposes of we the people. Section 2 addresses the House of Representatives as a body that is to intentionally represent the people of voting districts. Being apportioned by the number of people being represented is an intentional effort to assure equality among those who are to be members of this body. This subject was equal representation of citizens as individuals. We have an immediate challenge to any procedures, practices, or laws that would give one member of the House of Representatives more our greater representational effect than any other. Granting more effect to senior members, those who have longevity in their membership, violates representation, as does granting special representational effect to a speaker of the House. Neither should committee assignments be the sort of limit to the activities of a representative in saying to the interests of the citizens they represent. Such assignments could set duties upon various members of the House for taking an active role in committee actions, but cannot legally establish representational limits. This becomes a major challenge when the House as a body makes representational decisions on behalf of all the people by a majority vote. That permits a majority of representative citizens to act over the objection of a large minority, denying the very purpose of unity. While this was, at the time of the original signing, well within the common version of how English government was to operate, its fundamental override of the representation of citizens has had challenging consequences. This is perhaps most clear in spending decisions, where the one representative who addresses a citizen is unable to represent them in spending what has been collected from that citizen to operate government. This has resulted in legislation to expend central government resources serving some few areas of the nation without hearing the voice of those citizen owners who preside provide the funding. It has resulted in spending resources to support a department of education that delivers no value to the public that pays for it. When originally encountered, this may seem a challenge, but consider what value you receive from this organization. If your parents do not receive some product of this department's efforts that they value, then neither do they receive it as a member of the tax-paying public. Again, funding such government efforts would not have been a challenge at the founding of the nation, because they would have been considered normal government behavior in the English system of law. These challenges have developed as the nation has grown. The institutionalizing of the representative bodies with professional political leaders coming into what has been initiated as citizen representatives has shifted emphasis from representation to security and public employment. The institutionalizing of political parties is another major influence as it has grown into effective government business. Protecting the continuation of political leaders in office has become a political industry, and that is a challenge to having non-citizen political parties being given a voice in the House of Representatives that is only supposed to represent citizens. As will be examined under the Common Law Foundation for Agency, the political party is not an agent of the people who adhere to its general party platforms. It is the elected members in the House of Representatives who are supposed to represent citizens. For perspective, the methodology in this section of Article 1 addresses what is a good and effective means for collecting and presenting the votes of citizens as to elections. It describes a process for citizen selection of those who will represent them. It provides a reasonable means and probably as good a means as was unavailable for assuring that members of the House of Representatives actually would strive to represent their constituents. We have technology and methodology to do a much more effective election effort, but that would require an amendment to this constitutional agreement. Well-designed change could give citizens a greater voice, greater ability to steer and direct their representatives, but again, such a change would not serve the interests of non-citizens who have come into influence, nor would it support longevity and public employment within the current political system. Accordingly, the now awkward election system is still in place. It will probably continue until the people change it into something that better serves the population of self-governing citizens. The specific address of impeachment in this section is significant in the sense of going to the purpose of representation. Even as the writing in this section includes legislation, it also includes prosecutorial duties for managing the larger function of government. In the most representative body within the government, this House of Representatives has given the duty to watch the internal operation of government and to take offense of official action in prosecuting any government officers who would challenge the purpose stated in our constituting agreement by its ordering in this section, impeachment is made a fundamental purpose, even as legislation is a fundamental purpose. It is not some special power as in managing our monetary system, but is fundamental as a duty to be performed on behalf of we the people in fulfillment of the purposes set in the preamble. Section 3 addresses the existence and membership of a Senate, a House of State representatives. Again, the environment in which this constitutional agreement was signed contained a certain amount of confusion as to the status of the regional state governments. The people of the revolution did not fully accept them as sovereign bodies, and yet they were functioning as central governments for the purposes of service to their recognized territories. Giving them a voice in the Senate through representatives actually made these state governments, they made the bodies stronger, giving them greater official recognition. The potency of state governments must be understood in the context of this being a provision of this agreement where government powers are delegated from its sovereign citizens. It recognizes that these same citizens are also the owners of their state governments. This second House of Congress is to represent the people in the territories recognized as states. It does not just give voice to the states as subordinate feudal barons under a sovereign United States. It does give voice to the people in recognition of internal territories, providing for their representation as a collection of people with common territorial interests. A special concern is the election of representatives by the legislatures of the states, rather than directly by the people. This was a simple, effective, and appropriate way to address the process of election and relied upon the representative nature of the state legislature to assure the representation of the people of the state. It was too simple and did not provide a good means for political corporate bodies, such as political parties, to have influence on these representatives. They would answer directly to the legislatures that selected them. And so this method of election has been challenged and changed into something closer to that used to elect members of the House of Representatives. This will be further discussed in articles of amendment. Then we have a second specified congressional purpose. This time it is for trials of impeachment. The Senate is addressed as the people's agent in handling internal misconduct in office. The Senate is, by trial, given the power to remove public officers from their offices, where they abuse the privileges and powers. By its placement in this section, the trial of impeachment is every bit as much within the function of the Senate as is the passage of laws. The fourth section of this article addresses two authority relationships. The first is the authority to establish the method of voting for members of Congress. The basic process is to be set by the former colonial legislatures. They are to arrange for the proper representation of their people. To this, the new Congress has given the power of voting regulation. They can also set voting requirements and can regulate the process for the benefit of the larger people of the United States. Their efforts are to address a national consistency in voting process. Where the Congress has granted regulatory authority to do more than this, there is no indication of any purpose in assuming authority over the people in the state territories. In the final provision in this section, Congress is required to meet. It cannot excuse itself from meeting, but has granted authority to set a schedule for its meetings through the legislative process. In summation, we have an extremely well-considered establishment of Congress that is written into our constituting agreement. For your consideration, this is now the basis for our agreement as citizens of the United States. While it can be changed, it is not subject to change because something is better. It is subject to change when we, the people, can come together to do so. For now, this is our written agreement. It is good enough so that you can accept it as a basis for continuing the government that it has set in place. I'm not yet asking about whether you can accept the modern government that is in place, but the government that our founders envisioned when they wrote and signed this agreement.