Posted on 09/21/2014 4:06:15 PM PDT by SatinDoll
I keep getting asked about this and people keep advocating it, so let's talk about it.
The issue is a Constitutional Convention, with the expressed intent being to return the United States to its Constitutional Roots.
Sounds like a good idea, yes?
Well, it quite arguably is, if you'd like to see the government return to its Constitutional boundaries.
The problem is that this "remedy" isn't a remedy and if it comes to pass what you want won't happen.
I know this for a fact and, if you think about it, so do you.
I know what you're going to say: How can you be so sure?
It's simple: There is nothing wrong with the Constitution as it sits now. The problem is that it's not followed.
Let's just take one example: The Fourth Amendment
It reads:
Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It does not say:
a) Except when a police officer wants to stop and frisk you.
b) Except when the government thinks you might be a terrorist.
c) Except when someone else has your "papers" because you had to let them have same as an essential part of buying a service from them (e.g. your cell phone "tower" records.)
d) Except when you're driving while black.
e) Except when you're driving anywhere, at all, and the government thinks you might have drug money in the car but has no probable cause to believe so.
And on and on and on.
It says shall not be violated, and it further mandates that a warrant may only issue predicated on probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation (not the unsworn word of an unnamed "confidential informant" nor can a dog "swear an oath") and that the particular place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized must be named. That latter requirement is there so the cops can't go on fishing expeditions.
Let's try another one:
Amendment II A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
It does not say:
a) Except for guns that fire more than one bullet with a single pull of the trigger, unless they were made before a certain date and you pay a license fee.
b) Except for guns that have more than some number of rounds of ammunition in the magazine.
c) Except for guns that have some undesirable physical characteristic, such as looking scary, rifles or shotguns with a barrel shorter than some dimension, or similar.
d) Except for guns that fire a projectile larger than (X), or having characteristics of (X) (e.g. armor-piercing ammo, etc)
e) Except for guns that have been made quieter by the addition of a sound-suppressing device, unless you pay a license fee for same and the local sheriff thinks you're nice.
f) Except if you don't have a permit to (buy|carry openly|carry concealed) or otherwise "bear" same.
g) Except if you'd like to buy and take it with you right now (e.g. "waiting period" laws.)
h) Except for rocket launchers.
i) Except for surface-to-air missiles.
j) Except for nuclear arms.
Now wait a second, you say! Those last three are bullcrap in private hands!
Maybe. But if so there is a way to make them unlawful within the Constitution -- pass an Amendment. Absent that, ownership of any of the above and the carrying of any of the above, without any sort of permit, is lawful.
Unwise? Maybe. And immaterial. It's lawful and any law that says otherwise is unconstitutional.
Don't even get me started on the Tenth Amendment.
I further challenge you to find anywhere in the Constitution where the United States Supreme Court, or any court for that matter, is empowered to re-write or as they like to say, interpret the plain language of said Constitution.
This is the sum total of what is said on same in The Constitution:
Section 1. The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.
Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.
So where in there do you find there the power to rip up and rewrite said Constitution?
It's not there, and it never was.
Where there is legitimate debate over statutory construction let's have it, and let's have it there in the Supreme Court. But there is no debate of legitimacy over construction of the 2nd or 4th Amendments. There are excuses for adding clauses that never existed and still don't, but they're flatly unlawful irrespective of who pronounces otherwise. Those who claim that technology or other changes in life have made the world a different place have a means to address their concern: Pass an Amendment.
Instead what has happened in the "real world" we live in is that the government will find some thing they wish to do. They know it's unconstitutional but they do it anyway. Someone sues, after 5 or 10 years it makes its way to the Supreme Court and the government has in the meantime done its level best to stack the court with judges that will rule as it wishes. There is no law if the courts simply ignore what's in front of them, as occurred with Obamacare where the majority opinion ruled that a statute that was explicitly constructed not to be a tax was in fact a tax but the imposition of such a direct tax is barred from the Federal Government except in proportion to population. In other words you can be (directly) taxed but not in a different amount than someone else. This is why the 16th Amendment was necessary; to lay a tax on someone's work in proportion to what they made was unconstitutional.
All of this game-playing in the judiciary rests on the thinnest of foundation; so-called judicial comity and stare decisis. That is, the premise that once a decision is made even if blatantly unconstitutional, it is thereafter the foundation of everything that follows and reciprocity and recognition is owed against that (blatantly unlawful) decision.
You can't fix this with a ConCon or with "more Amendments" because they are subject to the same "interpretation" as has been all of the previous; the only solution is to unwind the previous violence done to the Constitution and then, if appropriate, pass Amendments that further constrain the rights protected by and powers delegated therein.
Those who argue otherwise are fools, and those who refuse to take up the underlying issue and address it head-on are playing with you and are attempting to get you to expend your resources on a false premise to thereby consume your efforts rather than solving the problem.
You can interest me in a ConCon when the First, Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are enforced as written -- not one second before.
The right place to enforce this is in fact the States. If the States will not do so, then the people have to decide whether we are 50 states or factually one state with 50 names.
You choose but don't blow smoke up my ass with this garbage about a "ConCon" fixing anything because it won't.
The issue is a Constitutional Convention, with the expressed intent being to return the United States to its Constitutional Roots.
Ahem. It is an Amending Convention authorized under the existing Constitution. It is no less and no more than any other Constitutional body.
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.
Is it possible to use a con con to present a list of crimes that the federal government has committed against the American people and then be able to issue a warrant for the arrest of all guilty including executive, judicial and legislative? Then have a plurality of governors provide national guard troops to make the arrest?
You mean those manufacturing jobs with health and retirement benefits that allowed a high-school dropout to live a middle-class lifestyle? People don't want to spend 4 months' salary on a TV set.
Really, how tough can it be?
Things like this are sold to those who are looking for the magic bullet to fix their ills, by those who know they will direct it to achieve their aims.
We have a perfectly good Constitution. Let's use it for a change.
A “Con-con” is merely a derogatory expression, and nothing of the sort is authorized by the constitution. Those decrying the “Con-con” are attempting to paint the picture of an out of control convention whereby the US constitution is thrown out and Leftists install something akin to the Soviet constitution.
Article 5 of the constitution does provide for a state convention bypassing congress, with the purpose of proposing amendments.
What’s wrong with the states proposing and voting on amendments? If you don’t like it, then you need an amendment to remove article 5.
What do you propose to ensure its implementation?
While Article V is a great idea and many of Levin’s Amendments a good way to regulate the federal beast and out-of-control judiciary, the folks promoting the idea are not discussing the very truth Denninger cites: a lawless federal beast is NEVER going to permit itself to have a yoke put upon it by the states or the people when it currently demonstrates it does not abide by the current Constitution.
Levin says we are in a “post-Constitutional” period. I agree with that assessment.
How then, do any amendments ratified get implemented into a ‘post-constitutional’ lawless federal system that is no longer beholden to existing Constitutional law????
Anyone care to explain how that is going to happen?
Anyone care to tell me how the courts will not be used to strike down such amendments as ‘unConstitutional”?
Anyone care to tell me how they will get the Oligarchy and the executive dictatorship to abandon the idea of issuing policy and executive actions that tell the federal beast to IGNORE such amendments?
Article V is an interesting idea, but thinking we can restrain a tyrannical government by civil means without a plan of action to force it upon lawless tyrants and their corrupted system is an exercise in futility. You cannot cure rot and cancer by simply adding another few pints of fresh blood. The cancer and rot has to be removed first.
No one is discussing that aspect beyond the corrupted electoral system that serves to the benefit of the Oligarchy.
A post-Constitutional government that is lawless cannot be expected to abide by new Constitutional laws it does not agree with unless it fears the people who demand they abide by the law.
And this federal government DOES NOT fear the people. They DESPISE and loathe the people they intend to rule.
Big difference.
The Amendment V proponents better start discussing how they intend to get a lawless post-Constitutional federal government to abide by new amendments to a document it no longer follows in the first place.
If they do not discuss how they intend to do that, they are not going to win many over to their cause, because most who are skeptical are saying the same thing Denninger wrote here: if they aren’t following the original anymore, how do you expect them to follow any new additions?
The whole article is a bunch of Straw Men.
An Article V Convention of the States is NOT a Constitutional Convention.
Nobody is proposing changing any of the amendments the article mentions. There IS nothing wrong with the text of any of these amendments.
What has been proposed is new amendments to reduce the power of the ruling class, principally through term limits where none now exist, and some new limits on the power of Congress.
The morning after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the governors of all the states should have started action for their states to secede from the Union, because with those two decision of the USSC, the federal government ceased to be legitimate, and started making overt war on the people. Of course, since all politicians have already been born, they did not care.
The Birchers are at it again. The constitution itself states that the states themselves can call for a convention to propose amendments to the constituion. So what is it? Are you all for federalism? Or are you against federalism? Are you all for following the constituion? Or are you all happy with the staus quo and oligarchs? Your choice.
Try reading
Levin
“As for your comment that the Constitution is perfect, if that is so, then why has it been amended 27 times?”
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I would suggest that many if not most of those amendments were mistakes. For instance the eighteenth was a bad idea, the twenty first was a good idea but only because it repealed the eighteenth. There was great resistance to the idea of the first ten, the bill of rights, on the basis that they would give congress an excuse to pretend that only those rights mentioned in the constitution were valid rather than the original intent to preserve rights which were considered self evident to most people and therefore not needing to be mentioned in the document. I think those who objected may have been right in doing so. Had we passed an amendment saying that no citizen can be deprived of the right to live past the age of fifty without due process of law I can easily imagine the supreme court finding something in that language to justify executing anyone they please who has reached the age of fifty one, after all we have let them live past fifty, it doesn’t say they have the right to live past fifty one. That may sound crazy at first reading but think of the implications of the decision that Obamacare is constitutional, the logical implication of that decision is that the government can require people to do pretty much anything you can think of and tax them if they fail to do so and the extension of that is that they can be imprisoned for failing to pay the tax. I cannot think of a single more absurd and twisted court decision than that one and yet a lot of supposedly logical thinkers say that it is based on the same logic that allows the states to require someone to buy liability insurance to drive a vehicle on the highways which is monumentally ridiculous.
I will add one more thing. It is very difficult to clarify meaning by ADDING words. Some people would write a constitution as long as War and Peace. No one who understands anything about human nature believes that adding a lot of words without removing at least as many will make the constitution easier to understand or less likely to be violated by congress, the courts and the executive branch.
Do people understand that the product of a con-con is a proposed amendment to the Constitution that the states can choose to either ratify, making it a part of the Constitution, or ignore, in which case the Constitution remains untouched and the con-con a waste of time?
I understand that but I am concerned about what the states may choose to ratify if given an opportunity.
My feeling is that the stupid political parties have divided the country. So not only is Congress gridlocked, the House controlled by RINOs and the Senate by Democrats, gridlock arguably effectively what the Founding States had wanted for the constitutionally limited power feds anyway, but Article V is pretty useless too given the 3/4 state requriement for ratification.
In fact, the noise about a con-con is possibly nothing more than election year politics.
What are you going to add to statements like "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated...", like "...shall not be infringed."
Aside from sprinkling it with a few expletives for emphasis, what are you going to do? (I am being facetious)
When the entire raison d'etre of the Government en masse has become that of subverting the constraining documents of Government and perverting the allocations of and restrictions on power, how do you make them pay attention to their duty?
Is there any peaceful way to do this within the system?
They ignored a million marchers from the TEA party, "non-event".
They laughed at those who questioned the credentials of the one in the White House.
They have used Federal Agencies and abused Federal Power to attack those who disagree with them.
They have, in violation of our laws, armed foreign insurgents who have for profit and in criminal enterprise turned those arms against our own people.
They have failed to secure our borders and the persons of our ambassadors overseas.
They have taken direct action to damage the morale and effectiveness of our fighting forces and given aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war.
What does it take to hold them to account?
The simpering mavens of Congress have also failed in their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution.
But do you seriously think any new Amendments to the Constitution are going to give them pause? ...That one more word will be the tipping point where they go, "Oh, I can only break 999 laws, 1000 would be too many?"
If the ballot box fails again, we're down to one box. If that's the case, may Almighty God help us.
And those states elected a raging leftist Muslim.
State legislators, not populace.
It doesn’t matter, the states have to agree to agenda prior to any meeting.
Proposed amendments would still require ratification by the states, as do amendments proposed by Congress.
One important difference is that Congress will never propose an amendment imposing congressional term limits.
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