Posted on 05/02/2015 1:35:55 PM PDT by Jacquerie
A couple of prominent conservatives have expressed concern over the possibility of a ‘runaway’ Article V state amendments convention. Such is their anxiety that runaway tyranny from Rome-on-the-Potomac pales in comparison to the possible horrors of the states getting together to relieve their people from oppression. Are these concerns fact based or irrational or somewhere in between?
An important, and likewise extra-congressional vestige of the federal system of 1787, and quite similar to an Article V state amendments convention in its constitutional foundation remains in force today. It is the familiar Electoral College (EC). Like the state amendments convention, the EC is also a specific grant of constitutional authority distinct from congress, courts and presidents. Both the EC and Article V convention are temporary, and neither can be made subservient to any branch of the government. This renders the EC and state amendments convention separate from, and superior to the three branches of government. The state amendments convention process is created by Article V; it is not a component of any of the three branches of government created by the first three articles. The limits to congressional involvement and duties are in Article V. Congress must call a convention upon applications from two thirds of the states, and determine the mode of ratification. That is all.
The EC is also loathed by liberals. Witness the National Popular Vote movement. The EC and state amendments convention processes represent end runs around liberals’ wholly owned government in Washington DC and media. The EC and an Article V convention are federal and therefore anti-democratic, which is why libs despise the EC and are working toward complete nationalization of presidential voting. Libs love democracy. Recall the 17th Amendment which turned ambassadors from the states into three-term, democratic and demagogic congressmen.
The EC and state amendments convention processes are federal remnants of a more perfect union that placed liberty preserving institutions ahead of fuzzy pablum populism, and democracy.
If you oppose a state amendments convention, do you also fear the Electoral College?
The EC is extra-congressional and completely controlled by the states. If the states are so wild and politically insane, why haven’t we had ‘runaway’ sessions of the EC? For whomever the states cast their votes is entirely up to the individual states. They can split their votes between Uniparty candidates or cast votes for Joe Blow down the street. States can modify their statutes such that their legislatures may determine for whom to vote with zero input from their citizens. The EC confab is a one-day event. Isn’t that dangerous? There is no subsequent meeting that requires approval of three fourths of attendees to implement the results. Why haven’t we experienced a runaway Electoral College?
Why hasn’t congress set down the rules the states and EC must follow? Answer: Congress has no more authority to participate in the deliberations of the EC than it does to participate in, or set the rules for an Article V state amendments convention.
No state EC delegation ever ‘ran away’ because the simple fact is that the duties of electors are defined by state statute. Replace the term ‘elector’ with ‘delegate,’ and you have a situation identical to that of an Article V amendments convention.
Delegates will serve their states. They will have no attachment to any statutory authority under the US.
Article V now, while we can.
> “And again, Mr. Levin’s proposed amendment presupposes judicial supremacy. And it would end, if he succeeded, with the enshrining of that fallacy in the Constitution, thereby officially overturning our republican, constitutional form of self-government, with its absolutely essential checks and balances.”
You need to start making sense but I don’t think you can so you probably won’t because you’ve been asked before and you haven’t answered.
Judicial Supremacy is related to the notion of federal and state government deferral to decisions of the federal judiciary. What you need to talk about is the other side of that notion without resorting to theoretical arguments based on wishful thinking.
Here’s the question you are not answering:
How would Mark Levin’s suggested amendments in his book “The Liberty amendments” somehow as you say “enshrine” the hysterics of ‘Judicial Supremacy’?
Let me make it clear as a bell, how would Levin’s suggested amendments ***strengthen*** the federal judiciary?
Here’s the answer to the question you will not answer. You are a ‘Nullification’ proponent. That’s it. And yet you cannot account for the lack of support for Nullification or the clear authority in the US Constitution for Nullification other than passing quotes and theories.
WHEREAS, Article V is CLEAR CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY and that in a nutshell is why the Article V movement is growing while the Nullification movement barely registers if at all on the radar of political support.
I and others know what Congress and the States are capable in theory of doing to check the federal judiciary but the fact is it’s not happening. Nullification is a red herring designed to persuade that Article V is not necessary yet it is clear that Nullification is not happening because there is no clear authority to support and sustain it. If conservatives saw merit and success in Nullification, it would be everywhere.
But under Article V authority, the federal judiciary can be checked; that is not a theory, that is a fact.
What are you talking about shifting to ‘carbon trading’? You’re now evading. Answer the question who are the largest creditors of the United States? When you answer correctly the Federal Reserve, then it follows that your scarecrow hysterics are baseless.
The problem of federal debt can be addressed without your version of Chicken Little crying the sky is falling.
> “Nowhere in that writing does Madison anywhere suggest that writing more Constitution is the remedy for the federal government deliberately ignoring the existing Constitution.”
Nowhere in Madison’s time could he or any of his colleagues have imagined an era of supercilious academic arrogance of a President Woodrow Wilson and the 1913 passage of the 16th, 17th and 18th Amendments, all of which are a stain on the US Constitution.
The 17th was the poison that has put the Republic on a slow track of self-destruction. The frog now is attempting to escape the boiling pot via Article V and you are attempting to mislead the public to escape via the theory of Nullification which has no explicit constitutional authority.
States will send delegates, not representatives. Delegates will arrive with commissions which define their authority.
The states will limit the convention by statute and provide for felony prosecution for violations.
Here is the Indiana statute.
Scroll to and click on Latest Printing.
??? Among the joint resolutions of the first congress was one which sent a dozen amendments to the states.
Amendments XI - XV improved and refined our republic.
It was largely downhill thereafter. Today, Rome-on-the-Potomac amends the constitution at its pleasure.
I think it’s becoming evident by the evasive answers and non-responses that these are ‘Nullification’ proponents. I would call them trolls but I am personally not against the notion of Nullification. If it can work, then so be it. But it has no clear guide path to follow nor process to sustain it. Hence, it has little political support and therefore I just can’t get excited about it.
Note how they argue about ‘elevating’ men and women to elective office that will understand and follow the Constitution, yet.... at the same time belittle the state legislators who they say cannot be trusted to follow their oaths.
These people are shills I am afraid. But it’s good to see their arguments because they reveal so many weaknesses.
Wrong. I almost never use that word. In fact, I'm a proponent of keeping the oath to support and defend our constitutions, state and federal, regardless of how egregiously some other officer of government in some other branch violates their own sacred oath.
The states will limit the convention by statute and provide for felony prosecution for violationsLOL. That's a dictatorial wet dream that won't happen.
Here's what will happen on day one:
The wordings of the first and second amendments will be made extinct with new amendments.
All (except for the 16th) amendments will be up for grabs...
Adios.
I knew this was coming and it is beneath you. You know well that American banks among the Fed are now among the biggest proponents of globalism and the destruction of American sovereignty. Hell, the US created the UN. They have an agenda. "Carbon trading" is the principal planned funding mechanism for that global agenda. Hence, the terms and conditions at the auction relate to extracting concessions on specific regulatory mechanisms within the government as relates to their investment portfolios.
You will note that virtually NONE of Levin's proposed amendments deal with the legal mechanics of that globalist agenda, from treaty laws or "trade deals" masquerading that are effectively treaties but without the asset of 2/3 of Jaquerie's precious and supposedly sovereign States. Unless and until we can get even a simple amendment fixing the manner of treaty ratification, unless we can get a ruling from the SCOTUS that these trade deals are unconstitutional as "international agreements" instead of treaties, NONE of what Levin or anyone else proposes is going to happen in his planned convention, the terms of which are every bit as likely to contain a poison pill as did the original Constitution.
If we can't abide by this document and we have governments nationwide that ignore their State Constitutions just like the Feds do in DC, a new supreme law of the land portends even worse. I won't go there.
I run across this opinion a lot at this site, and it is only logical for me to assume that you believe the American people are no longer capable of self-government. If that is so, I see only three possible solutions, and they only open up more questions.
I understand where you are coming from, but I think you have not considered all the possibilities if an Amendment Convention isn't held to prevent us from going over the cliff. What reasonable solutions do you see before we descend into violence and civil war?
> “I knew this was coming and it is beneath you. You know well that American banks among the Fed are now among the biggest proponents of globalism and the destruction of American sovereignty. Hell, the US created the UN. They have an agenda. “Carbon trading” is the principal planned funding mechanism for that global agenda.”
So what? These banks are not independent of the Federal Reserve. They are intermediaries in transferring digitally created funds to the federal government and taking government bond paper in return for a 2% cut for which they have no skin in the game.
These banks are instructed to buy Us debt in return for the free digital money they receive from the Fed. They are not free agents. They are mercenaries.
Look, you’ve been caught stepping in it. Time to fess up and stop stepping in it further. You can still retain credibility but it’s not anyone’s fault but your own that you stepped in what you stepped in.
Your opening this to carbon trading is an evasive maneuver. It has nothing to do with Article V.
And now you’re going off on Treaty amendments. My advice to you is to step away from that which you stepped in.
You’ll note the constant drumbeat of how stupid are the American people, how ignorant they are, how corrupt they are...
Usually when these types of comments appear, it means learning and illuminating has been kicked to the curb. It’s revealing.
Long-winded and based in wishful thinking. It sounds good but it’s not reality.
What you say has been said countless times before and argued by sharp legal minds to no effect.
You seem to think you and you alone have all the answers and all the correct viewpoints from your own soapbox.
But you ignore reality and focus instead on ideals. No one can work with that because it goes nowhere, isn’t worth the time and energy when other more practical and effective alternatives exist that accomplish even greater reforms.
If you have cavorted to undermine the Article V movement, you’ve failed.
So, you want to throw ideals in the trash, and then amend the Constitution.
Okey-dokey then.
Jacquerie, I’ve read many posts saying leftists can’t hijack a convention because the rules say only the matters in the authorizing legislation may be brought up for amendment and so on, but here’s the concern.
1) Libs have learned that they don’t have to obey the rules. Witness Ebola and Congress doing whatever the hell they please: no budget, rampant over-the-top EO’s, trying to conduct treaty negotiations and bypass Senate ratificaiton, etc.
2) RINO’s actively aid and abet Dem/lib lawlessness. Not only do they rarely if ever do anything to stop it, they NEVER do anything to punish it, such that the libs are worse off than if they hadn’t tried an unConstitutional power grab in the first place.
Matt, you may want to weigh in on this. I know conventions are a fictional and real-life interest of yours.
Then tell me, what did Madison mean by "the powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Union?"
Is an Article V proposing convention not a power of the states?
Why did Madison declare that state powers are "indispensably necessary" to the nation?
Would you only be satisfied if Madison had listed specifically those powers?
Federalist 46 clearly described situations that would drive states to push back with all of the "indispensably necessary" powers that they could muster, and those powers include Article V proposing conventions. At the time, they also included replacing their Senators at the end of their terms.
-PJ
Your silly and hostile. We have been moving towards Socialism. It is only a matter of time until the Third World coalition created by the “Negro Community Organizer From Chicago” declares a national dividend. Then we will be totally Socialist.
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