Posted on 12/20/2023 4:06:37 PM PST by Buchal
"All of these efforts and threats are a desperate attempt to gain political advantage through patently unconstitutional actions. They are a waste of time and resources and should be dismissed as such."
(Excerpt) Read more at heritage.org ...
Section 3 was not repealed. Repeal is a very precise term.
The disabilities prescribed in Section 3 were removed. Also a very precise term.
“They hated and fought against the United States. So does the left. They should be thrown out. The US is worth defending to the death.”
Same goes for their RINO enablers.
The perturbations are hiding in the penumbras.
“How can a statute repeal part of a Constitutional Amendment ratified by the states? That doesn’t make sense.”
Try actually reading the 14th Amendment then it might make sense.
The last sentence in Section 3 giving Congress the authority to “remove” the disability imposed by the amendment is unique. While seven amendments have language giving Congress the “power to enforce” each amendment “by appropriate legislation,” only the Fourteenth Amendment has language giving Congress the power to specifically void the provisions of one section of the amendment.
I just read the entire Spakovsky article at American Heritage and he explained it well. I excerpted the key part in my #45 post.
Kangaroo court
Banana repooblic
Failed nation
A different take on Section 3:
https://akhilamar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Sweep-and-Force-of-Section-Three.pdf
I didn’t know this. Thank God for The Heritage Foundation. Rock solid research.
The biggest problem with the left weaponizing the government is that their madness allows for a looser and looser interpretation of any law, case law, or any other legal standard so that it merely becomes an expression of their whims to do anything they wish.
It is like being governed by the queen character of Alice in Wonderland.
Bookmark
Because it was written into the original amendment.
Why is this an either/or proposition?
A Constitutional Amendment cannot be repealed or altered by an act of Congress. Prohibition was not repealed until passage of the XXI amendment. FDR chose to publicly declare he would not enforce the Volstead Act, but only in the case of 3.2 beer. The rest had to wait
If this were true a Dem Congress and POTUS could repeal or change the words “ shall not be infringed to shall be monitored by the state.
The text of Section 3 gives Congress the power to alter it.
And don’t forget to check underneath the ‘penumbras’!
Failing to enforce border law, is rebellion - just sayin
I think this is just another interpretation of the amendment. Their interpretation of the "disability clause" is that it is a wholesale amendment of the amendment. They hide behind arguments of individuals involved in the Civil War, the various amnesty acts that refer to "individuals," etc. But they don't discuss the reasons why other interpretations suggesting a case-by-case removal of the disability was the true intent. We have to look at other disqualification clauses in the Constitution for insights.
First, let's look at simple sentence grammar.
No person shall be a... who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of... shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same... But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.This plain reading implies that the rebellious person in question is asking Congress to remove the disability for their case alone. This appears, to me, to be a legitimate interpretation of the clause that is not being discussed.
Historical citations of various amnesty acts shows that the span of the acts were for defined persons, not posterity. Removing the disability for all posterity would be a de facto amendment to the Constitution.
Second, let's compare this to the impeachment sections of the Constitution regarding the Senate.
Article I Section 3 Clause 7 says:
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.Notice the conjunction, AND, that separates removal from office from disqualification to hold future office?
Does a plain reading of this suggest that it is a dual and conjoined punishment, that is, that someone convicted of impeachment is both removed from office and denied future office; or is it two separate and distinct punishments?
More drastically, if they are separate and distinct punishments, can the Senate vote to keep someone in office but disqualify them from running for future office? Is there a dependency defined by the conjunction AND that implies order? There is no "normal" reading of such conjunction language that suggests that the order of the actions that are conjoined has any bearing on the meaning of the phrase.
Yet somehow, these punishments have been separated; the Senate can remove someone from office and still remove the "disability" of holding future office. Separate votes have been held to remove someone from office but still let them run for future office.
Was the first vote to do this not a de facto removal of the disability from all future impeachment subjects?
What if clause 7 were instead written as:
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Senate may by a vote of two-thirds remove such disability: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
This writing of clause 7 would have made it clear that there were two separate punishments that the Senate could consider. However, if the Senate were to vote to remove the disability, would scholars insist that it was a removal for all future convicted individuals? I don't think so.
I think the safest conclusion is that Article V must be respected, that amendments can only be amended by future amendments, and that any legislation that enforces amendments are to only handle cases covered by such amendment.
Even with this interpretation, I still believe that the 14th amendment does not cover Presidents, especially President Trump. I just don't think that the authors of this paper got there appropriately.
-PJ
The law requires a 2/3rds vote to modify or rescind the Constitution of the United States.
“Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898. Four years after the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification, Congress exercised its power under Section 3 and passed the Amnesty Act of 1872 with the required two-thirds vote in each House.15 The Act provided.”
You fellows ought to read up on history of the Civil War, also known as the War Between the States. You might find out a lot about the pain and anguish caused by the conflict. You might also come across references to the annual encampments of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Sons of the Confederacy. The encampments were held for many, many decades by men who fought one another. They are also many tales of compassion during that sad conflict. I find it strange that people who had no nickel in that conflict, or for that matter no relatives within living memory, should hate so much. You’re like little kids on a school yard re-acting some “heroic” battle of which they have heard but truly do not understand. You perpetuate misunderstanding and ignorance while men, on both sides - whose shoes you are not even fit to tie, gave every thing they had. Everything including limbs and lives. You are not fit to judge them or anyone , nor do you understand the heritage they left you.
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