Yes you have it right with respect to Professor Natelson who has created a great guideline document.
I see the poster semimojo as trying to stir fears that the mission of the Convention delegates will somehow be hijacked because is it broad enough to create amendments that will diminish States Rights and mover more control of States Rights over to the Federal Government. He said the mission is so ‘broad’ that something can slip through to effect such things. I asked him for examples and they were wholly unrealistic.
Well, fine. But semimojo needs to ask himself a question: WHY would the several states apply for a Convention for the purpose of proposing amendments, the effect of which would only further enslave them to the federal authority???
The Article V COS is designed to be a "push back" of the States vis-a-vis the overreach of federal authority at the expense of the States, by providing the States with a means of doing an end-run around Congress altogether.
WHY would the States apply for a convention that would further reduce their own powers and authority? That's just nutz.
I don't think any such amendments would be successful and of course haven't argued that they would be.
If we have a convention with only a fuzzy notion of states rights as the topic nothing will be accomplished. The hard work of getting agreement on the details of amendments won't happen at a big meeting with delegations from 50 states, each coming in with their own ideas of what the amendments should be.
Do you really think that deals are actually negotiated at international summit meetings? Of course not. The hard work is done in advance and the summit is ceremonial. This isn't complicated - it's basic organizational behavior and blocking & tackling.
Yikes!!! it appears that semimojo is smuggling in a lot of bogey-men through the back door. To suggest, or expect that a COS is defenseless against any inadvertent something slipping through to diminish States' rights entails that one regards the Framers, not as the consummate master craftsmen they were, but as foolish, unprincipled dilettantes totally uprooted from any sense of realism and the human past.
Article V — like the rest of the federal Constitution — is a marvel (or miracle) of brevity and concision. Its language is extraordinarily compact; meaning it is not easy to decoct on a first reading. The words on the printed page do not immediately capture the extraordinary dynamism involved in the Framers' intent for Article V: That it would enable the federal Constitution to be lawfully revised over time, so as to correct abuses of governmental power and changing social, technological, economic, etc., etc. circumstances that inevitably occur over time. This may be done by one of two means. The first is by amendment arising in the Congress itself. The second, is by Convention of the States for Proposing Amendments. Both are of equal dignity under the Constitution.
One thing is clear: The Framers intended that the COS for Proposal of Amendments is designed from the get-go to enable the several states to do an "end-run" around Congress altogether, if enough of them agree [the current quorum is 34 states] that the federal government is usurping their Tenth Amendment powers and authority.
To me it is absurd to believe that the States would apply for a Constitutional Convention dedicated to the purpose of reducing their own powers and authority, to the advantage of the federal government of which they are complaining in the first place. Rather, the applying States can reasonably be expected to be exceedingly jealous of their own "sovereign or semi-sovereign" ( as Prof. Natelson puts it) powers and authority.
Boogie-man in the closet here. JMHO FWIW.
Enuf on that for now.
Hostage, a while back you had a post on the subject of popular recall of senators. I found it very interesting, but can't locate it now. Would you kindly give me a link?