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Well, one CAN deplore the uses to which the 14th Amendment has been put, but since the Courts have already intervened, the Courts must be used to disintangle the mess. The amendment process serves only one purpose and that it to ratify a consensus. That is why the 19th Amendment did not work and why it took a hundred years for the 14th Amendment to be applied for the purpose it was intended, which was to protect blacks from white majorities at the polls and white mobs in the streets. All along the Congress had the authority to force the states to abolish those laws that violated the plain intent of the Amendment, and Congress would not, nor would a majority of the states.

Oops! 18th Amendment, of course--although I WILL point out that it took more than a generation for women to use the suffrage in proportionate numbers.