Legislative Study Session: Fill & Download for Free

Yes. Converting to Christianity is easy. Depending on the church or denomination, this might include some formal classes on the basics of the faith, informal study sessions, and a baptism. For example, the Roman Catholic Church has a programme, Roman Catholic Initiation of Adults, and a formal ceremony, the Sacrament of Baptism.The complication here is the formal process to leave Islam. Muslims are covered under an act of legislation known as the Administration of Muslim Law Act. Thus, a Muslim needs to formally renounce Islam so that the strictures and protections of the act no longer apply to him. Formal renunciation is a chore because this information is not advertised and many Muslims who do know the process are not going to simply tell people how to leave Islam. I think this is a mistake. God is neither enhanced if all Creation believes in Him, nor is He diminished if all Creation disbelieves. If people want to be Muslims, we should make it easy, and if they want to leave, we should respect their decision and make it easy as well.The first step to renunciation is to get a statutory declaration done, stating that the one renouncing Islam, and no longer considers himself a Muslim. A lawyer is not even required to file a statutory declaration. One simple goes to court, obtain a statutory declaration form, fill in the form, proceed to a Commissioner for Oaths and swear.The second step is to proceed to the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore and go to the customer service counter. There, request for the form to apostatise. They will send the client to a nice room and an ustadz will come over with a questionnaire. A convert deciding to renounce might be referred to the Muslim Converts’ Association of Singapore for counselling. If the one renouncing is certain, simply decline the offer for counselling and proceed to fill up the form.With these two steps, whoever has decided to renounce, has legally left Islam.

No. None of the alleged benefits of term limits – improving legislative efficacy, reducing corruption, encouraging younger legislators to replace aging incumbents, and broadly diversifying legislative bodies – have been observed in any state with term limits. The popular appeal of term limits is based solely on voters’ incorrect beliefs that “career politicians” become more and more detached from their constituencies as their careers advance, but this is not based in any evidence.I’ll go on about those points at length in the below answer, but in short: term limits are a lazy democracy’s way of handling broken legislatures – and, in fact, further undermine the legislative process – and ultimately diminish voters’ responsibility to hold their legislators to account.The impact of term limits has been studied at several points. In 2006, a report on a survey of state legislatures conducted at two points in 1995 and 2002 – a period during which most term limits came into effect – found:Virtually no effect on the types of people elected to office. . . . Once we control for characteristics of their districts and legislatures, we find no systemic differences between legislators from [term-limited] and [non-term-limited] states, whether [“old timers”] or [“newcomers”]. . . .Term-limited legislators become less beholden to the constituents in their geographical districts and more attentive to other concerns. . . . Legislators in adopted term-limit states report spending less time keeping in touch with constituents than do those in non-term-limit states. . . . The difference in time devoted to constituents is about twice as large [between term-limit and non-term-limit] states. . . . Term-limited legislators report spending far less time than those on non-term-limit states securing government money and projects for their districts.A study published in 2010 found that the oversight capacity of term-limited legislatures was diminished:[M]onitoring state agencies was a low priority . . . and it dropped even lower after term limits were implemented. More specifically, we found some institutional roles to be associated with legislators placing a higher priority on monitoring, especially before term limits, whereas some individual motives were associated with a lower priority, especially after term limits. Legislators exhibited more confusion about the process of monitoring after term limits.And moving past legislatures, a 2011 study found that, among governors:Holding tenure in office constant, differences in performance by reelection-eligible and term-limited incumbents identify an accountability effect: reelection-eligible governors have greater incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of voters. Holding term-limit status constant, differences in performance by incumbents in different terms identify a competence effect: later-term incumbents are more likely to be competent both because they have survived reelection and because they have experience in office. We show that economic growth is higher and taxes, spending, and borrowing costs are lower under reelection-eligible incumbents than under term-limited incumbents, and under reelected incumbents than under first-term incumbents.All of this should be intuitive. There is zero incentive for term-limted legislators to put in any significant effort to address problems that may well exceed their time in office.I mean, just stop and think about this for a second. Say you’re hired for a job, but told that, at best, you’ll only be in the role for two years. Sure, you might do that job well enough to not get fired, but you’re going to be very actively looking for a better opportunity, and are unlikely to deeply invest yourself in that organization’s long-term survival. Why would politicians be expected to behave any differently?In the meantime, non-elected bureaucrats and lobbyists can simply wait out or ignore troublesome, term-limited legislators, having no real expectation of coherent, consistent long-term oversight of their activities.We then observe novice legislators either becoming more beholden to the non-elected yet more permanent political actors in navigating their legislative obligations, or more deeply reliant on their own ideological leanings. In either case, far from improving legislative bodies, term limits weaken legislators’ institutional knowledge and desire to form lasting partnerships with colleagues to solve long-term problems in a deliberative way. This was borne out in a 2005 cooperative study by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, under The Joint Project on Term Limits:The “lame duck” factor plays a critical role in the declining influence of party leaders in term limited legislatures. Since most leaders assume their leadership position during the last legislative session before they are termed out, members know their time is limited. They see less value in cooperating with a leader whose days are numbered, and leaders are less able to sanction members who challenge them. In short, members know that they can outwait a leader, and they do. What all of this adds up to is less procedural orderliness and diminished party discipline.The role of leaders has changed under term limits too. They now have more responsibility than ever to educate inexperienced new members about basic procedures, processes and policies, and to explain the role of the legislature and pass on the norms of behavior for their chamber. This task becomes more difficult as leaders take on their position with limited legislative experience themselves. Leaders are also playing a greater role in fundraising and campaigns in many term limited states. . . .Most interviewees reported that committees are weaker and less collegial and courteous under term limits, due to the high turnover in committee chairs and the reduced legislative and policy experience of members. Research in California indicates that committee gatekeeping has declined significantly. It is difficult for inexperienced legislators to identify problematic legislation, so fewer bills are killed in committee. The situation in Colorado is similar, where bills are less well-crafted when passed to the floor. In Maine, interviewees report that members give less deference to the work of committees, and committee reports are more likely to be challenged on the floor than in the past, even if they were adopted unanimously or with large majorities.Ten years later, another study concluded that, “term limits reduce bipartisan cosponsorship even when controlling for average legislative tenure . . . by altering the incentives that legislators face” to include heavy competition among term-limited legislators to seek higher political office.In essence, all term limits do is inspire ambitious politicians to rocket up the chain of leadership within the legislature - which they poorly understand - as quickly as possible in order to be in a position to seek higher, preferably non-term-limited office. It has turned career politicians from beasts of incumbency to beasts of naked ambition.But all of this misses the greater point that if voters are so dissatisfied with the performance of legislative bodies, then the easiest solution is to be bold enough to vote against badly performing legislators. Advocates of term limits hail the fact that there is more competition for legislative seats in states and municipalities with term limits in place, but they don’t at all demonstrate that these elections are attracting a better class of legislators or inspiring greater participation among voters. In fact, researchers have found that the increased competition is among partisans who’re running in primaries with almost guaranteed success in safe seats. So all you have is greater partisan competition for a smaller share of voters.As 2010 showed, a strong and coordinated grassroots movement to remove apparently detached incumbents from halls of power can be effective. However, with term limits, there’s less incentive for voters to pay attention to their legislative bodies, because they may be lulled into believing that their participation matters less when bad legislators are guaranteed to be pushed out in a few years’ time. This provides an even further disincentive for legislators to act in their constituents’ interests, since good behavior isn’t any more likely to be rewarded by an engaged constituency than average or bad behavior likely to be punished.So again, there is no evidence that term limits work in voters’ favor. They’re an excuse pushed out every so often to shift the burden from voters to be engaged in the civic process to legislators to do as little harm as possible in their short tenures. It’s a perversion of the democratic process, and it’s lazy. If voters are unhappy with their incumbent representatives, then they need to do the hard work of coordinating a campaign to push them out of office rather than coming up with schemes and excuses to wait them out of office.

The expedient of making him ineligible a second time had been devised. This was as much as to say we should give him the benefit of experience, and then deprive ourselves of the use of it. -Gouverneur Morris, Philadelphia Convention[1]They objectively don’t work[2] . Every problem that term limits are advertised to solve either persist or become worse.They don’t make legislators more competent or responsible to the people. They don’t improve voter turnout. They don’t make legislators less partisan. They don’t make government more efficient or less beholden to special interests.They are just a bad idea that gets trotted out by people - and often partisans[3] who feel “oppressed” that their party isn’t in power - who are either too lazy or lacking in personal accountability to take responsibility for the current state of log-jammed, uncivil, hyper-partisan politics[4] .The impact of term limits has been studied at several points. In 2006, a report on a survey of state legislatures conducted at two points in 1995 and 2002 – a period during which most term limits came into effect – found:Virtually no effect on the types of people elected to office. . . . Once we control for characteristics of their districts and legislatures, we find no systemic differences between legislators from [term-limited] and [non-term-limited] states, whether [“old timers”] or [“newcomers”]. . . .Term-limited legislators become less beholden to the constituents in their geographical districts and more attentive to other concerns. . . . Legislators in adopted term-limit states report spending less time keeping in touch with constituents than do those in non-term-limit states. . . . The difference in time devoted to constituents is about twice as large [between term-limit and non-term-limit] states. . . . Term-limited legislators report spending far less time than those on non-term-limit states securing government money and projects for their districts.A study published in 2010 found that the oversight capacity of term-limited legislatures was diminished:[M]onitoring state agencies was a low priority . . . and it dropped even lower after term limits were implemented. More specifically, we found some institutional roles to be associated with legislators placing a higher priority on monitoring, especially before term limits, whereas some individual motives were associated with a lower priority, especially after term limits. Legislators exhibited more confusion about the process of monitoring after term limits.And moving past legislatures, a 2011 study found that, among governors:Holding tenure in office constant, differences in performance by reelection-eligible and term-limited incumbents identify an accountability effect: reelection-eligible governors have greater incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of voters. Holding term-limit status constant, differences in performance by incumbents in different terms identify a competence effect: later-term incumbents are more likely to be competent both because they have survived reelection and because they have experience in office. We show that economic growth is higher and taxes, spending, and borrowing costs are lower under reelection-eligible incumbents than under term-limited incumbents, and under reelected incumbents than under first-term incumbents.We then observe novice legislators either becoming more beholden to the non-elected yet more permanent political actors in navigating their legislative obligations, or more deeply reliant on their own ideological leanings. In either case, far from improving legislative bodies, term limits weaken legislators’ institutional knowledge and desire to form lasting partnerships with colleagues to solve long-term problems in a deliberative way. This was borne out in a 2005 cooperative study by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, under The Joint Project on Term Limits:The “lame duck” factor plays a critical role in the declining influence of party leaders in term limited legislatures. Since most leaders assume their leadership position during the last legislative session before they are termed out, members know their time is limited. They see less value in cooperating with a leader whose days are numbered, and leaders are less able to sanction members who challenge them. In short, members know that they can outwait a leader, and they do. What all of this adds up to is less procedural orderliness and diminished party discipline.The role of leaders has changed under term limits too. They now have more responsibility than ever to educate inexperienced new members about basic procedures, processes and policies, and to explain the role of the legislature and pass on the norms of behavior for their chamber. This task becomes more difficult as leaders take on their position with limited legislative experience themselves. Leaders are also playing a greater role in fundraising and campaigns in many term limited states. . . .Most interviewees reported that committees are weaker and less collegial and courteous under term limits, due to the high turnover in committee chairs and the reduced legislative and policy experience of members. Research in California indicates that committee gatekeeping has declined significantly. It is difficult for inexperienced legislators to identify problematic legislation, so fewer bills are killed in committee. The situation in Colorado is similar, where bills are less well-crafted when passed to the floor. In Maine, interviewees report that members give less deference to the work of committees, and committee reports are more likely to be challenged on the floor than in the past, even if they were adopted unanimously or with large majorities.Ten years later, another study concluded that, “term limits reduce bipartisan cosponsorship even when controlling for average legislative tenure . . . by altering the incentives that legislators face” to include heavy competition among term-limited legislators to seek higher political office.In essence, all term limits do is inspire ambitious politicians to rocket up the chain of leadership within the legislature - which they poorly understand - as quickly as possible in order to be in a position to seek higher, preferably non-term-limited office. It has turned career politicians from beasts of incumbency to beasts of naked ambition.But all of this misses the greater point that if voters are so dissatisfied with the performance of legislative bodies, then the easiest solution is to be bold enough to vote against badly performing legislators.Advocates of term limits hail the fact that there is more competition for legislative seats in states and municipalities with term limits in place, but they don’t at all demonstrate that these elections are attracting a better class of legislators or inspiring greater participation among voters. In fact, researchers have found that the increased competition is among partisans who’re running in primaries with almost guaranteed success in safe seats. So all you have is greater partisan competition for a smaller share of voters.All of the above should be intuitive.I mean, just stop and think about this for a second. Say you’re hired for a job, but told that, at best, you’ll only be in the role for two years. Sure, you might do that job well enough to not get fired, but you’re going to be very actively looking for a better opportunity, and are unlikely to deeply invest yourself in that organization’s long-term survival. Why would politicians be expected to behave any differently?There is zero incentive for term-limted legislators to put in any significant effort to address problems that may well exceed their time in office. In the meantime, non-elected bureaucrats and lobbyists can simply wait out or ignore troublesome, term-limited legislators, having no real expectation of coherent, consistent long-term oversight of their activities.Term limits are a bad idea that need to go away and be replaced by an electorate that takes its responsibility to elect good politicians and hold them accountable both personally and seriously.Frequent elections are necessary to preserve the good behavior of rulers. They also tend to give permanency to the Government, by preserving that good behavior, because it ensures their re-election. Roger Sherman, Philadelphia Convention[5]Footnotes[1] Online Library of Liberty[2] Carter Moore's answer to Is there any evidence that term limits for elected officials help improve the government?[3] Carter Moore's answer to What is your least favorite amendment in the US Constitution?[4] Carter Moore's answer to Who do you blame for the lack of any legislative progress in the US Senate?[5] Online Library of Liberty