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To: Hostage

To block a constitutional amendment from ratification and enactment requires 13 out of 50 states.
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True, but if the problem had been addressed immediately after Roe v Wade, the country was more conservative, and the amendment might have passed.

I don’t support the convention of states. The constitution is mostly fine, if Judges would just adhere to the original intent. I’d like a reversal of the income tax, and the 17th, and end the citizenship by birth of noncitizens such as the tourism and illegals.


401 posted on 02/04/2019 12:00:06 AM PST by greeneyes
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To: greeneyes

> “I don’t support the convention of states. The constitution is mostly fine, if Judges would just adhere to the original intent.”

greeneyes, you should work on developing your background knowledge and understanding of history. It is evident you’ve picked up incomplete and deficient views of others on the subject of organizations working to amend the Constitution. The Convention of States is a very reputable and capable group of Americans comprising former US Senators, judges, executive branch appointees, respected constitutional scholars. There are other organizations such as the Assembly of States that are comprised of well-informed patriots who are state legislators having detailed knowledge of American history and principles. These groups have worked steadily to advance proposals for states to organize to pass amendments according to Article V. The number of states is nearing a critical mass. The process of Article V is advancing and will happen.

On the one hand you are following some sort of group or your own emotions or both that advocate for amending the Constitution to address the travesty of abortion, but on the other hand, you are subscribing to groups with deficient views of efforts by organizations to amend the Constitution. Whoever you are following, they are trying to have it both ways. “The Constitution is fine if only judges etc. etc. etc.” while “the Constitution needs to be amended and should have been amended way back when etc. etc. etc.”

I am sorry but that is such a lame array of principles. It falls into a bin of echoing that the framers were ignorant when they provided two ways to amend the Consitution. They themselves used the amendment process to form the Bill of Rights. The view of the crowd you are subscribing reduce the process of sustaining the American way of life to “I don’t believe more amendments will help because judges suck, people suck”. Clearly, whoever you are reading and following do not under the history of Article V.

Amendments can be written so that no court can misinterpret the meaning and intent. You have adopted a view of others on the internet who are defeatists. That is not American, America is not a defeatist nation.

For example, how could a court misinterpret the 22nd Amendment any differently from how it is written? This is evidence that amendments can indeed be written in a way that courts cannot twist their meaning. It can be done. Has it always been done in the past is a lesson that instructs how amendments should be crafted today.

Amendments can be written to avoid judicial abuse. For example, a proposed amendment such as the following is written and crafted in such a way that no court can argue against its effect and application:

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AMENDMENT XXVIII (’Federal-State Rebalancing’)

To restore the foundational structure of State Legislatures to Congress, the following amendment is proposed:

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Section 1. Senators in Congress shall be subject to recall by their respective state legislature or by voter referendum in their respective state.

Section 2. Term limits for Senators in Congress shall be set by a vote in their respective state legislatures but in no case shall be set less than two terms nor more than three terms.

Section 3: The seventeenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

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REGARDLESS of whether you agree with the content of the above or not, try to advance an argument of how it can be defeated by judicial abuse. Try it. In fact, first remove its content to extract its skeletal form:

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AMENDMENT XXVIII (’...’)

To ..., the following amendment is proposed:

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Section 1. ... shall be subject to ... by their respective ... or by ... in their ....

Section 2. ... shall be set by a ... in their respective ... but in no case shall be set ... nor more than ....

Section 3: The ... to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

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Where judges abuse the Constitution is where terms and phrases are not clear or explicitly defined. Words such as “jurisdiction”, “uniform”, “commerce”, “income”, etc. are targets for abuse. In the above example amendment draft, there are no easy targets for abuse.

Groups such as the Convention of States, Assembly of States, are populated by persons who are very aware of history and how to craft reasonable, level-headed proposed amendments that are protected against judicial abuse. Their detractors, their enemies try and brand them as radicals who will overthrow the Constitution, that the Constitution is “just fine as it is”, “leave the Constitution alone”; this emanates from the same corner as fake news. They use scare tactics arguing that attempts by state legislators to amend the US Constitution will result in radicals overturning it. They do not want power shifted out of DC to the states. Conservatives have the upper hand in states. They control many more of them than do the left. They control enough to propose and ratify amendments, the left has no such power today. Conservatives should use the power while they have it.


404 posted on 02/04/2019 4:40:57 AM PST by Hostage (Article V (Proud Member of the Deranged Q Fringe))
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