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To: Bloody Sam Roberts

The 2nd amendment would simply be “rewritten” to mak it meangingless. Nothing to lose my ass. Liberals are just going to do nothing while conservatives make the current constitution (that is ignored by liberals) more conservative? Yeah uh huh.


19 posted on 03/20/2014 4:35:13 PM PDT by plain talk
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To: plain talk
Just for the sake of argument, do you think a watering down of the 2nd Amendment would make it alive out of convention? Do you honestly think that 3/4's of the state legislatures would ratify such an abomination even if it did?

Will the Left be present at an Amendments Convention? Certainly. An Amendments Convention will be a snapshot of America at that time and place.

But the purview (subject) of the convention is to be defined up front as aiming at reducing the federal government's power and enhancing that of the states. Such an amendment proposal would be ruled out of order by the presiding officer. The Left would be told that they need to start a campaign to petition for their own Amendments Convention to push the matters they wish to raise.

23 posted on 03/20/2014 4:41:07 PM PDT by Publius ("Who is John Galt?" by Billthedrill and Publius now available at Amazon.)
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To: plain talk
"... this is dangerous ..."
"... this is a terrible idea ..."
"... other important things might be changed ..."
"... they will attack the Bill of Rights ..."
"... the right to free speech or right to bear arms could be taken away ..."
"... they might try to re-write the entire Constitution ..."
-
An Article V Convention of States cannot amend the Constitution.
-
An Article V Convention of States is simply a formal gathering of delegates
by at least 34 states, to discuss, debate, and "propose amendments" to the Constitution.
-
The State resolutions calling for an Article V Convention of States all use the same language.
"...for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution which:
- Impose fiscal restraints on the Federal Government;
- Limit the power and jurisdiction of the Federal Government; and
- Limit the terms of office for federal officials and members of Congress."
-
Any proposal not within the stated purpose of the Convention of States
(fiscal restraints; limits on power and jurisdiction; limits on terms of office)
would be unauthorized, rejected, and not approved by the Convention of States.
-
Any proposal that emerged as a "proposed amendment" by the Convention of States
would still require ratification by 38 states, the same as with any other proposed amendment.
-
An Article V Convention of States cannot amend the Constitution.
-
Read more at: http://www.conventionofstates.com
-

24 posted on 03/20/2014 4:42:50 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (We have met the enemy and he is us.)
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To: plain talk
Take a stroll through the Bill of Rights. Pause at each clause. By my reckoning, the only clauses still in full effect deal with quartering troops in private homes and our right to defense counsel. The 2A is under continuous attack, and it exists as a practical matter only because of gun rights groups.

The Left’s victory is nearly complete. We are no longer a self-governing people, perhaps with the exception of Article V. It still exists; it is our last remaining hope to restore freedom.

27 posted on 03/20/2014 4:44:51 PM PDT by Jacquerie (Obama has established executive branch precedents that no election can reverse. Article V.)
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To: plain talk
The 2nd amendment would simply be “rewritten” to mak it meangingless. Nothing to lose my ass. Liberals are just going to do nothing while conservatives make the current constitution (that is ignored by liberals) more conservative? Yeah uh huh.

Absurd; 3/4ths of the legislatures of the States would have to ratify any amendment — if you think that 38 states would willingly and knowingly drink poison then you think that every peaceable means has been exhausted.

37 posted on 03/20/2014 6:26:45 PM PDT by OneWingedShark (Q: Why am I here? A: To do Justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God.)
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To: plain talk

> “The 2nd amendment would simply be ‘rewritten’”

No one is going to “re-write” anything, not as long as there are still 13 states left standing to block it! Please do the math.

The safety mechanisms are built into the stated subject matter of the convention, and in the numbers that are required to propose and then to ratify any amendments to the Constitution. And let me really emphasize that word: “propose.”

To begin with, the reason for calling the convention in the first place is not to address what the government CAN do, but to address what the government can NOT do. The subject of the convention is specifically limited to proposing amendments that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, that limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and that limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress. Any proposal by any delegate that would fall outside of these parameters would be declared by the chairman of the convention to be “void ab initio,” or dead on arrival, and there would be no further discussion of the matter. You must know, don’t you, that that’s the way conventions work?

Secondly, delegates to the convention will be selected by the various state legislatures. If you look at the numbers of Red state legislatures (26) versus Blue state legislatures (18)*, conservatives have a sizeable majority, and one that only stands to increase in the upcoming election, both in state governorships and chambers of the legislature controlled by conservatives.

Certainly there will be states like California, New York, Illinois, Hawaii and others that will send their flaming extremists, but it’s a one-state, one-vote system. Even if the liberal delegates were somehow able to approach the number of conservative delegates, no leftist proposal expanding the power or scope of the federal government can be passed inside the convention without a 2/3 vote of the states, and that just isn’t mathematically possible.

Lastly, after the Convention of States has done its work and adjourns, nothing will have been changed. Nothing. All that will have happened is that a bill of PROPOSED amendments – there’s that word again - similar in process to the first ten original amendments - our Bill of Rights - will have been submitted to Congress, which then must in turn send them back out to the legislatures of the several states for ratification, either by convention or a vote of the legislature.

Again, math is our friend here. Article V of the Constitution requires that 75% of the states ratify any proposed amendment before it becomes the Supreme Law of the Land, which also means that it would take only 13 states to kill any hair-brained proposal that might have somehow managed to slip through. Remember, the proposed amendments must stand or fall as written - no state can make any changes, not even a single letter. If the states can’t agree in the numbers required, the proposal fails for lack of support.

The bottom line is that there are multiple levels of safeguards in place to prevent a “runaway” convention - we have nothing to fear from those who would “hijack” the process. All of this fear-mongering is nothing more than tired, transparent scare tactics, like the old trope that George Soros is secretly funding the Article V movement, because the radical socialist extremists plan to take control of the convention and not only re-write the Constitution, but do away with conservatism completely.

If that were indeed the case, why wouldn’t liberal Democrats be all over this legislation? Aren’t they smart enough to understand how dangerous such an event would be to freedom and liberty? Why is it that when Article V legislation is passed, it’s done without a single Democrat vote? Shouldn’t we expect at least one Democrat to break with party orthodoxy and vote to repeal the 2nd Amendment, to establish a $25 national minimum wage, and to abolish conservatism, all in one fell swoop?

I submit to you that they would do just that if there were but one single word of truth in the arguments being peddled by the fear merchants of the John Birch Society. There isn’t, so they don’t. The Birchers insist that the Constitution is sacrosanct, that it can’t be violated or tampered with, that it must be followed as written to the letter of the law… all except that part in Article V, that is, where it authorizes the states to hold conventions to propose amendments.

In as many words, they say that they don’t trust the people to have sense enough to conduct a convention properly, that we should trust in our current form of government to correct itself, that everything will be fine as long as we just keep voting for change... us... the idiots, the dupes and the fools too stupid to run a convention... but we should keep voting.

How’s that been working out so far?

Seriously, there is something, indeed, that we DO have to fear, and that’s our current runaway federal government. We should also fear what will most certainly happen to our Constitution if we do nothing.


39 posted on 03/20/2014 7:32:51 PM PDT by Strawberry AZ
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To: plain talk

I neglected to include the citation for my Red state / Blue state comparison...

* Source: https://www.statescape.com/resources/partysplits/partysplits.aspx


41 posted on 03/20/2014 7:36:36 PM PDT by Strawberry AZ
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