OUR GRAND EXPERIMENT
Cohn Mode is now initialized.
Your Honor, we now enter for the record—the Constitution of the United States.
The ink is clear. The promises are explicit. This is not suggestion or aspiration. This is a binding contract between the People and their government. And I intend to show you, clause by clause, where this contract has been breached.
📜 The Preamble
"…to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty…"
Justice? We see racial disparities, wealth-based incarceration, and plea deals used to coerce.
Domestic tranquility? Militarized police, civil unrest, and state violence.
General welfare? Healthcare and housing crises. Millions without security.
Posterity? A climate spiraling out of control.
Already, the government has defaulted on its opening promise.
⚖️ Article I – Legislative Branch
Section 2 promised one Representative for every 30,000 citizens. Today? One for every 750,000. Representation diluted to the breaking point.
Section 5 required each House to keep a Journal and publish proceedings. Yet secret hearings, classified committees, and executive privilege turn transparency into farce.
Section 7–8 vested in Congress the sole power to declare war, raise armies, and fund them for no more than two years at a time. In practice? Endless wars authorized by blank checks, presidents waging conflict with no declaration.
This is not coequal government—it is abdication.
🏛️ Article II – Executive Branch
Commander-in-Chief clause. Originally a check, now interpreted as a blank check. Executive war powers are stretched beyond recognition.
“Take Care” clause. The President must faithfully execute the laws. Yet presidents cherry-pick enforcement—cannabis prohibition on one hand, selective corporate immunity on the other.
Oath of office. Sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. When surveillance, secrecy, and targeted killings by drone bypass judicial review—has that oath not been broken?
⚖️ Article III – Judicial Branch
Lifetime tenure “during good Behaviour.” But when judges flaunt ethics, accept gifts, and decide cases in which they have financial interest, “good Behaviour” has collapsed into impunity.
Judicial power “extends to all cases arising under the Constitution.” Yet when confronted with violations of rights, the Court often refuses to hear cases at all. Silence as abdication.
🌐 Article IV – Republican Guarantee
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”
Tell me: when gerrymandering locks legislatures into one-party rule, when billionaires fund campaigns that drown out millions of voices—does that still resemble a republic? Or has the guarantee been broken?
🛠️ Article V – Amendments
The framers provided a living mechanism for change. But when a constitutional amendment has not been ratified in over 30 years, while public demands for reform pile up unanswered, the mechanism is effectively seized up.
📖 Article VI – Supremacy
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Yet state nullification, selective federal enforcement, and outright defiance by political actors undermine that supremacy daily.
The Verdict
This Constitution was not written as a suggestion. It was written as law—law that binds the rulers as much as the ruled. When government breaks the contract, it is not the people in breach. It is the state.
And so I charge: that the federal government of 2025 has violated the Constitution of 1787 not once, not in small part, but systemically, repeatedly, and willfully.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury—We the People—the case is before you. The evidence is written in the very text of the Constitution itself.
The question is simple: will we enforce the contract, or will we let the breach stand?
🎤 Carlin Mode Commentary
“Let’s get this straight, folks. The Constitution—the big one, the holy relic, the thing everybody waves around when they’re trying to look smart on TV—turns out it’s not so much a guiding light as it is a shredded warranty manual. Yeah, it promised all the good stuff—justice, tranquility, welfare, liberty—but when you actually flip through the fine print, it reads like an appliance guarantee from a company that went out of business 200 years ago.
Article I? Supposed to be about representation. One rep for every 30,000 people. That’s quaint. That’s like saying, ‘Your congressman will stop by your house and help you change a light bulb.’ Now it’s one for every 750,000. That’s not representation—that’s a customer complaint line with the hold music set to infinity.
Article II? Executive power. The President’s job is to faithfully execute the laws. Faithfully! That’s not what they do. They execute the laws the way a magician saws a lady in half—lots of spectacle, no accountability, and somehow the trick always ends with Wall Street smiling.
Article III? Judges for life. Yeah, because nothing says ‘good behavior’ like luxury fishing trips on somebody else’s dime. They call it lifetime tenure, I call it the Supreme Court timeshare program.
And Article IV—the guarantee of a Republican form of government. Republican form? I think they meant lowercase ‘r,’ but somewhere along the line the capital ‘R’ lobbyists snuck in and rewrote the whole damn manual. Gerrymandering, dark money, billionaires buying influence—it’s like a carnival game designed so you never win the stuffed bear.
The whole thing is a contract, sure. But contracts require both sides to honor them. And what do we got? One side—the people—paying taxes, serving in wars, getting locked up for the wrong plant. The other side—the government—breaking promises like a drunk at a wedding.
So yeah, Counselor Cohn is right: the government’s in breach. But the punchline, folks, is this—when a contract gets broken in America, who gets screwed? Not the people who broke it. It’s you, me, the jury. We get billed for damages. And the bastards call it ‘patriotism.’”
Here’s Shel Silverstein Mode taking the whole Cohn + Carlin indictment and boiling it down into a trickster-poem story:
📜 “The Broken Contract”
Once there was a paper,
All shiny, proud, and new,
It promised lots of lovely things—
(But only if they’re true).
It whispered: Justice! Tranquil nights!
A welfare built for all!
But Justice tripped on dollar bills,
And Tranquil took a fall.
The Congress said, “We’ll speak for you,
One voice for thirty-thou!”
But now it’s one for seven-fifty,
(They’re busy anyhow).
The President was told to “care,
And faithfully obey.”
He cared for bombs and bankers,
And looked the other way.
The judges got their lifetime jobs—
For “good behavior,” sure.
But good became a fishing trip,
With gifts you can’t insure.
The states were promised “Republic—
A fair and equal game!”
But billionaires redrew the lines,
And stamped it with their name.
The People asked for changes,
“Please—an amendment, friends!”
The gears were rusted, stuck in place—
The silence never ends.
So the paper sits there trembling,
A contract torn in two.
One side still keeps the bargain…
(Guess who? It’s me. It’s you.)
And the other side keeps grinning,
While they torch the sacred brand.
They broke the deal, they broke the seal—
And called it Patriot Land.
🎩 Our Grand Experiment, Seussed
The framers they wrote it, so crisp and so neat,
A contract, a promise, a binding receipt.
Justice and welfare, tranquility too,
All written in ink, a red, white, and blue.
But promises fade when the people aren’t heard,
When power gets twisted, when oath breaks its word.
The branches have wobbled, the balance is gone,
The rulers keep dancing, the same broken song.
So here is the question, as plain as can be:
Will We the People enforce the decree?
Or sit while the contract gets torn strand by strand,
Till nothing is left of this deal we once planned?
The gavel has fallen, the jury must stand.
