MADISON: "Now how did this loophole get in there?...oops!
Interesting...so the house & senate really can be avoided if we get the states to act?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2956370/posts?page=108#108
Good points all. Clearly the GOP model has failed and its adherents seem poised to acknowledge final failure. Time to consider new models and paths to success.
What is of interest and of substantial potential power in a new model is drawn from your statement:
“Fortunately we still hold the House and something like 3/4 of the State legislatures. And those facts will become far more important as the Obama downward spiral continues on toward next summer.”
If somehow the Red States comprising 3/4 of the total could start a State Convention movement, then the process of such a movement could bypass both Senate and the Presidency, and the Supreme Court.
As an example, look at the number of states pushing for Voter ID and having it moved through the courts with subsequent wins or imminent wins.
The same could happen with issues such as gay marriage, tax reform, education, energy etc. all brought under an umbrella of a States Convention process. The breadth of such a process would be too diffuse and difficult for the MSM to fight as they would need to define, caricature and demonize thousands of targets in geographical regions where they are not welcome.
The Founders left us the States Convention route as a last resort to withstand tyranny.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) could be a vehicle to organize a States Convention movement. The fact that leftist groups hate it is a good sign that its leadership is conservative.
Here’s a couple of leftist orgs and their take on ALEC:
http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10887/cmd-special-report-alecs-funding-and-spending
The chief complaint of a States Convention movement arises from fear that leftists can seize control of it and fundamentally change the Constitution. But a States Convention process to power requires 2/3s of state to pass proposals and 3/4s to implement passed proposals into the Constitution. So there is a strong barrier that the left would need to overcome in order to control power from statehouses.
The left has seized *federal* power from urban centers of population to steer a state to its US Senator picks as well as urban mayorships to service union demands, primarily government unions including public teacher groups. This is the source of their strength. Such a network of urban power strongholds was referred by Obama’s handlers in 2008 as the “Urban Archipelago” that can ignore Statehouses because power at the statehouse level is lacking.
But statehouses tied together and unified can trump the Urban Archipelago.
Statehouse power stems from people that inhabit the land outside the urban strongholds, the “Country Class” and this ‘country power’ when mobilized and impassioned yields power in the US House of Representatives as exists now.
In such areas there exists a diffuse republic in the form of distributed districts that lend considerable opportunity to steer state power. The Left has abandoned this route to power because the centralization of federal power has rendered Statehouses weak and ineffectual, but only because they are not organized together.
What is needed is a groundswell of solidarity to empower leaders of a State Convention movement to unite, organize and train cadres of people to effect Statehouse power.
It comes down to solidarity and the ability to organize and maintain it.
IIRC, 34 states are required to make up 2/3 of the states.
A Con-Con is a very bad idea, no matter how bad things seem right now. With a Con-Con, anything would be up for grabs.
Delete the 2nd amendment?
New amendment enshrining socialised medicine as a “right” (or anything else, for that matter)?
4th amendment needs to go?
Abolish the 10th amendment?
All could happen in a Con-Con.
I’m not following you. Please explain more. 2/3 or congress Vs. 2/3 of State Governors? We need 33 governors obviously. But doesn’t Congress have to initiate the process in the Senate with 2/3 majority? Per the constitution, the Senators represent the states while the Reps represent the people.
Grassroots in action.
The Alinskyites would hijack it.
They would like nothing better.
That is what I thought.
What we will hear is we cant have con-con because you don’t know what they will come out with in the end. I call BS on that argument.
What ever they come out with have to be ratified or else it will die. In fact, the ratification our Constitution there were 78 Amendments offered by the State conventions.
I would like to see the repealing of the 17th out the gate. Harry Reid should represent the State of AZ interest. I think you would find him behave very differently if he had to be appointed by his state legislature after some of the garbage he has forced down their throats.
This would be a disastrous move.
be careful what you ask for...
and if the republicans cannot beat the worst president in history, what makes you think that they can magically control a constitutional convention? the libs will OWN it. and then you can kiss just about every amendment in the bill of rights goodbye, especially the second.
bad idea,. really, really bad idea
I don’t think Levin was hinting at that. He would have just come out and said it. I think he was reminding everyone that the GOP brand isn’t the problem.
This would be an astoundingly bad idea. If opened, there are no limits, everything is on the table. Don’t fall for the “limited” con-con.
If we are not winning elections, how could we EVER carry the day at a constitutional convention?
A constitution written today would incorporate Soviet concepts like “right to a job”, UN concepts “Rights of children”, EU concepts like “right to free speech as long as it is not hurtful, or insulting”.
There would be no second amendment as we know it. They might give lip service to classic upland bird hunting and say we can use guns via the National Guard, but the hated 2nd would be gone for individuals. There would be no ethos of defending against a tyrannical government.
10th amendment reserving rghts to the state unless specifically given to the feds? Gone.
Right to peaceably assemble? freedom of religion? Yeah,,right.
This nigtmare is best left alone. There is no shortcut. We have to win elections, and live up to the original. We have to roll back the usurpations that have already occurred. That is the only path.
There is no magic path where we can do an end run and create a new set of rules, suddenly enshrining what we cannot win in elections and in congress. And if we did, the same political realities would destroy it just the same as before.
Now proposing amendments like balanced budget, like ending the Fed, an amendment making it illegal to sign a treaty that gives any foreign entity force of law over US citizens, like overturning Obamcare and clarifying the commerce clause. That would be workable.
But no con con. Another reason, how about the two term limit for President suddenly being removed and we get Obama for 3 or 4 terms like FDR?
an anchor baby no-citizenship amendment would also be good. But not as a con con, just as single amendments.
It certainly is easier to tell a thieving, indebted, tyrannical central government where to go...and if 3/4 of the states choose to do so..they most certainly can.
The Federal Leviathan’s response of course will be to basically swing wide open the Southern border.
If a Con-Con is such a bad idea, why did the Founders write it into the Constitution?
Aren't we all?
If you listen to Mark Levin, you must have also heard him explain how a Constitutional Convention would be a nightmare, and something which should be avoided at all costs.
He explained how it would allow the America haters to tinker under the hood and gut the Constitution completely, rewriting it to suit themselves. In other words, it’s a leftist dream-come-true. Bye-bye America.
Heed the Great One, and shelve any idea that resembles this one. Please.
This might be what he’s thinking:
QUOTE: “Some fear that any amendments convention might exceed the limited purpose for which it was called. Under the Constitution, however, any amendments proposed by a convention would still need to obtain the approval of three-quarters of all the states.”
MORE DETAILS ON THE BILL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Barnett
“QUOTE: details of the BILL:
The amendments, summarized by number below, would:
1.Disallow federal income taxes (i.e., repeal Sixteenth Amendment), as well as gift, estate, and consumption taxes; allow FairTax; require a 3/5 supermajority to raise or set new taxes
2.Set limits on the Interstate Commerce Clause
3.Disallow unfunded mandates, and conditions on funding.
4.Close a constitutional loophole that allows treaties to override established limits on power
5.Extend free speech consideration to campaign contributions, and to cover any medium of communication (including the Internet)
6.Allow a resolution of three-quarters of the states to rescind any federal law or regulation.
7.Establish Term Limits for Senators and Representatives.
8.Provide the President with a line-item veto to balance the budget on any year in which it is unbalanced.
9.Reinforce the Ninth Amendment by specifying additional rights and by providing a process for any person to prove the existence of an unenumerated right.
10.Restrict judicial activism by mandating an originalist method of interpretation.
THIS IS BRILLIANT.
Exceedingly dangerous!
MADISON: "Now how did this loophole get in there?...oops!