Posted on 08/15/2013 9:48:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
When I studied the U.S. Constitution in school, I learned that for a bill to become law it first had to be introduced in either the House or the Senate. Today, a cynic might say for a bill to become law a member of Congress must first be introduced to a lobbyist.
Much of government's dysfunction, cost and overreach can be traced to the abandonment of the constitutional boundaries the Founders put in place for the purpose of controlling the lust for power.
In his new book The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, Mark R. Levin asserts the U.S. government isn't performing up to standards established by the Founders because, like a flooding river, politicians have breached their constitutional limits.
Levin, who graduated with honors and a law degree from Temple University and who hosts a popular syndicated radio talk show, believes "The nation has entered an age of post-constitutional tyranny" resulting in this attitude by our leaders: "The public is not to be informed but indoctrinated, manipulated and misled."
Before this is dismissed as the ranting of a far-right extremist, consider the case Levin builds: The executive branch has assumed for itself "broad lawmaking power," creating departments and agencies that contravene the doctrine known as separation of powers; Congress creates monstrosities like Obamacare that have no constitutional origin, spending the country into record debt and making America dependent on foreign governments, especially China; the judiciary consists of men and women who are "no more virtuous than the rest of us and in some cases less so, as they suffer from the usual human imperfections and frailties." And yet they make decisions in the name of the Constitution that cannot be defended according to the words of the Founders, who believed the judiciary should be the least powerful and consequential branch of government. In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the judiciary branch would be the weakest of the three because it had "no influence over either the sword or the purse. ... It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment."
Who can credibly disagree with Levin when he writes: "What was to be a relatively innocuous federal government, operating from a defined enumeration of specific grants of power, has become an ever-present and unaccountable force. It is the nation's largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider and pension guarantor."
To return America to its constitutional boundaries, Levin proposes a series of "liberty amendments" to the Constitution, beginning with one limiting the terms of congressmen so they might avoid the bipartisan virus that infects even some who believe in limited government, mutating them into power-hungry influence seekers with little regard for the public good.
Another amendment would establish term limits for Supreme Court justices. "The point is," argues Levin, "that the Framers clearly intended to create intrinsic limitations on the ability of any one branch or level of government to have unanswered authority over the other."
Another amendment would establish spending limits for the government. Another would grant states the authority to check Congress.
Levin admits these amendments are unlikely to win congressional approval because in Washington power is not willingly relinquished. That's why he proposes the states bypass Congress, as the Framers provided, and pass these amendments themselves. As Levin notes, "Article V (of the Constitution) expressly grants state legislatures significant authority to rebalance the constitutional structure for the purpose of restoring our founding principles should the federal government shed its limitations, abandon its original purpose and grow too powerful, as many delegates in Philadelphia and the state conventions had worried it might."
Americans who care about the health and future of their country have the power through the states to force the federal government to abide by its founding document. Mark Levin's book is a serious work that can serve as an action plan for curing what ails us.
What's needed is less focus on Washington and more on state capitals where legislators are more likely to be responsive to the demands of "we the people."
As I read what you post is that Congress, both Senate and House I assume, has a primary role as to proceeding in the ‘Amendments Convention Method’ either way given. This is my concern, that at this time in the political scene a person like Reed today or somebody like him in the future will just stonewall any action like they do/are doing today. As such it’s dead on arrival for practical purposes.
The 3 were illustrative. Since you didn’t catch that, here is a more complete list: IL, CA, MD, HI, MA, CT, RI, VT, OR, WA, NY, NJ, DE, and ME.
There are 14 which equals 28% of the states, which is more than enough to scuttle Mr. Levin’s idea. If Mr. Levin comes up with something that does not require the agreement of those states, then I’m all ears.
The first is from the American Legislative Exchange Council. It can be downloaded from their website in PDF format.
Proposing Constitutional Amendments by a Convention of the States: A Handbook for State Lawmakers
The second is a 1973 report from the ABA attempting to identify gray areas in the amendatory process to include an Amendments Convention.
Report of the ABA Special Constitutional Convention Study Committee
These are two fine reference works from different sources that, taken together, fill in most of the blanks.
We can learn one thing from the communists, and it is: attack on all fronts at all times.
This is a good front to open.
"For all practical purposes" is not a constitutional term. The only way to repeal any constitutional statute is to amend the Constitution with an express repeal of that statute.
I recall justice Scalia at a chitchat with a congressional committee within the last year. He rattled off a bunch of swell sounding rights from the constitution of the Soviet Union. The problem was that the government, people, everyone ignored them and they were never in force.
The point of Mark's book is to reestablish what we have lost, to restore the American Republic.
5.56mm
Going back to my previous post in this thread, Levin overlooks the idea that parents are not making sure that their children are being taught the Constitution, particularly the Founding States' division of federal and state powers evidenced by the Constitution's Section 8 of Article I, Article V and the 10th Amendment.
We have a generation of low-information voters who are satisfied with letting others tell them what the Constitution says, as opposed to deciding for themselves what it says.
Now a great deal of the elected and appointed officials are immoral and areligious or anti-religious.
well I am impressed with your knowledge! Or do you have a crystal ball ? Have you been to Atlantic City lately ? Point is you don’t KNOW anything. That’s why the ‘game’ is played.
Well I’m impressed with your rudeness and obstinacy. Do you work for Gov. Christie?
In answer to your questions, if I had a crystal ball I would have already used it to pick the numbers for last weeks lotto draw. Given that none of us are truly psychic, we have to look at things based on notional probabilities.
So here is the truth you don’t want to hear: Mr. Levin’s plan to add amendments to the Constitution is useless. Perhaps even worse than useless. It has little chance of success as it relies upon our adversaries essentially rolling over and agreeing to it. There is little if any chance of that happening. If you want to waste your time with it, you don’t need my permission or blessing to do so. Knock yourself out.
I don’t work for Christie. But I will vote for him for Gov. I would rather be Obstinate and rude than a know-it-all defeatist that has thrown in the towel. Since you don’t have a crystal ball you don’t know the ‘truth’ or what I want to hear. Mark is fighting for our country..........and that I admire.
“The 10th Amendment has, for all practical purposes been excised from the constitution.” — Jacquerie
Sad but true. While Amendment 10 is also correct, pragmatic anti-constitutionalism side is EXACTLY what drives DC these days. And Kagan, our new Supreme Sandwich court member, had ended Constitutional studies in Harvard when she was a dean.
Ever since Teddy Roosevelt bypassed the Constitution to found national parks, we have had a MALIGNANT TUMOR that has eaten away respect for the Constitution. Sure, national parks could have been formed through an amendment, but Teddy was too impatient for that. Then Clinton got away with his corrupt Escalante land grab with that same kind of power [to the profit of a foreign power by the way].
A great vanity would be to go line by line through the constitution and highlight those clauses which have been excised, corrupted, or ignored. Hmm, on second thought maybe not such a great idea; little would be left un-highlighted.
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