Posted on 11/26/2010 1:29:20 PM PST by RightSideNews
Yet another unanticipated fastball has been hurled directly at the radical left’s destructive agenda. It is called the Repeal Amendment. Brainchild of Georgetown Constitutional Law Professor Randy Barnett, the proposal has gotten legs with the help of Florida attorney Marianne Moran, Executive Director of RepealAmendment.org.The proposal calls for a constitutional amendment that would allow the states, by a two-thirds majority vote, to repeal objectionable federal legislation and regulations. Virginia Representative Eric Cantor, slated to be Majority Leader in the upcoming Congress, has gotten behind the movement, as has Virginia’s governor, and lieutenant governor, leaders in the state legislature and Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Cantor articulates the justification well:
(Excerpt) Read more at rightsidenews.com ...
BTTT
Two thirds of the states couldn’t agree on free beer and pizza.
If they're old enough to die for their country, they're old enough to vote. We Americans are an aging population anyway.
My dear FRiend, everything hinges on the courage, intelligence, conviction, and honor of the electorate regardless. We are a country based on citizen involvement and if we as a people wish to chop off our own heads, then the good will suffer with the bad. But at least the good have a chance as long as they wish to push the limits of their courage and creativity.
The idea of letting a 1/3 minority of the states having the power to shut down the federal government is laughable and would be impossible to enact. Two thirds of the states can’t amend the Constitution, they can only call for amendments. It takes three-fourths of the states to amend the constitution, and yet this ‘insanely high’ majority has been obtained dozens of times. The call for a constitutional convention has never passed not because it takes two-thirds of the states, but because people fear a runaway convention repealing the entire constitution.
‘If they’re old enough to die for their country, they’re old enough to vote.’
This is neither logical or reasonable.
“The idea of letting a 1/3 minority of the states having the power to shut down the federal government is laughable and would be impossible to enact. Two thirds of the states can’t amend the Constitution, they can only call for amendments. It takes three-fourths of the states to amend the constitution, and yet this ‘insanely high’ majority has been obtained dozens of times.”
When?
“The call for a constitutional convention has never passed not because it takes two-thirds of the states, but because people fear a runaway convention repealing the entire constitution.”
To be quiet honest I could live with a repeal of the entire constitution and thus abolishment of the Federal government.
That sounds very nice to me right about now. I don’t think it can get much worse then having the Federal Government’s own discretion rather then the constitution be the limits of its own powers. For all intensive proposes the Federal Constitution is a dead letter.
Their ain’t nothing that they can do in convention that would make our present situation significantly worse.
They can’t propose to Amend the Constitution as to remove the senate, and if they propose to replace it... well then our States can simply opt out of joining the new more imperial union. (We be rid of the leftist States and their commie abusive voters once and for all!)
So to be frank we ain’t got nothing to lose and everything to gain from a Constitutional convention at this junker in our history.
And if you payed attention to history we came with in just 1 state short of calling for a constitutional convention as presently as the 1960’s over the issue of the Federal court robing our states of their republican form of government.
Forcing the senate to be a popularly representing body rather then a regional body to check the tyrannical will of the pure majority.
That 33 states took 10 years to accomplish and by the time they did the damage done to our political system had precluded the possibility of any more of them getting it done.
The tyranny used their new power to consolidate control.
This is why I say 2/3rd is a REALLY BAD NUMBER!!
‘When?’
Every time we amended the Constitution.
‘To be quiet honest I could live with a repeal of the entire constitution and thus abolishment of the Federal government.’
Please name one political leader in the US not named Paul who would adopt that position.
“‘When?’
Every time we amended the Constitution.”
Great so we do something 27 times over the course of the last 222+ years, 10 of which were done in the first few years, as part of the initial compromise. 1 of which (the 27th) was part of the original 12 proposed as part of the same compromise and took 200 years to get the necessary 2/3rds.
You must be nuts if you think this is even remotely comparable to the rate at which congress can pass laws to get around our rejection. Indeed they could easily pass 20 abusive laws in the time it would take us to get 34(2/3rds) state legislators to act to repeal just 1.
Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment might be better, but either way, we want the U.S. Senate more responsible to the states.
U.S. Senators should be much more answerable to the legislatures of their own states, as it was before the Seventeenth Amendment. But short of that, being answerable to a body of 3/4 of the States could be a great help.
I am sorry, I am opposed to democratic government. I prefer a representative Republic.
However, if the states have the same senate filibuster rules as the fed does, then that could still be a lengthy process.
“I am sorry, I am opposed to democratic government. I prefer a representative Republic.”
As do I which is why I very much favor a easy method for the repealing of laws.
State legislators are in general as slow and deliberate in their actions as is congress.
Geting one of them much less 34(2/3rds) of them to act on any one particularly thing is a feet of extraordinary coordination and agreement. No less so then that of the acts of Congress, indeed it can be much more difficult.
The point is even if it were the right that the majority should be allowed to imposed upon the minority without their constitutionally authorized consent.(democracy)
Using a majority of States to abolish something enacted by the majority of congress is simply using one majorty to abolish the abusive acts of anther.
We gain nothing except a more directly representative (and more expensive to pay off veto), and thats assuming they lowered the bar from 2/3rds to 50%+1.
At 2/3rds the “veto” is practically useless just as it is redundant.
If our veto is to have any effect at all and be reasonable consistering the nature of the way by which this “Veto” is to be implemented, (By vote of many different State legislators) the “majority” required to in-act such a veto to protect the must in fact be a minority if the “veto” is to have any hope of accomplishing the desired function of protecting the rights of the minority from the democratically elected and often tyrannically self-serving majority.
Something that is also necessary regarding the nature of the State legislators being as slow and deliberate in their actions as is congress.
1/3rd(17) or less of the States is both tenable, and functional.
Under what would amount to an extraordinary display coordination among the states, it is not unreasonable to expect that they might be able to repeal a few laws a year.
That is a few out of doesens that congress would enecact. (note Congress would be motivated to enact more numerous and smaller laws to hinder the same, just as they would also have to enact laws much more broadly agreeable to the whole of the union as to prohibit the possibility of 17 States finding the acts offensive to their rights.
But still it would take quite some time for even 17 states to repeal a signal law after it has been enacted. Seeing as a great many states meet only once every 2 years, most of our States would have to justify special secessions for the matter.
During which time congress would have a significant peroid probably several mouths to 2 years in which their acts would be in place.
I think that your proposal amounts to ‘tilting at windmills’ because you will never get three fourths of the states to agree to let one third of the states overturn the general will.
“I think that your proposal amounts to ‘tilting at windmills’ because you will never get three fourths of the states to agree to let one third of the states overturn the general will.”
So we must turn to the matter of secession. The whole idea of a Constitution is to “overturn”/limit the “general will”.
I also do not favor a thermonuclear civil war. You do have a way of picking political losing ideas.
“I also do not favor a thermonuclear civil war.”
Let us hope that the Statist equally have no love for the idea of thermonuclear “Civil War”. That they may as such be conveced to let us depart in peace rather then destroy all including that which they mean to rule (without the consent of the governed) so that they may not lose any.
I do not beleive the folk we are dealing with are so insane, but if they are indeed so insane we must verify that fact as it would prove most useful in destroying them.
” You do have a way of picking political losing ideas.”
I am trying to think Creatively and logically up a way to get us out of what has been over the last 100+ years a losing war for the side of liberty.
We are not even going to hold our ground with half measures, just as we have not been able to over the last 100+ years.
Theses “radical” solutions may be difficult to implement, indeed i agree many of them are impossible as is. But they were not proposed out of concern for their implementability but out of the need to logically address the problem.
While politics may be the art of the possible, insofar that the politically possible is limited the useless, it wast our valuable time and energy to play this game.
So logically we must change the game. But how do we change the game? We introduce new rules, and impose them on the basis of the natural rules which form the foundation of all law at its roots.
Suddenly the relm of the possible expands to include things that were once impossible.
This is precisely what we conservatives have been in desperate need of for the last 100 years. Because for the last 100+ years under the rules in which have played this game the relem of what is and is not possible has effectually prohibited us from doing anything but lose more and more ground to government.
Indeed if we look back into history the only time government truly retreats much less even attempts to hold the line is when it faces the real possibility of losing power, a possibility that comes not from the replacement of politicians but the withdraw of subjects to rule over.
Do not think I am not concerned with the art of the possible(politics) so much as the matters which are necessary and essential to any meaningful gain.
I don’t to that end have any intention of playing by the rules set by the likes of leftist tyrants like Lincoln for such rules only garrentee defeat of liberty and growth of government. The game has been riged against us for more then a 100 years. It’s time we do a little rigging and rattling of our own.
It’s time we find away to make the imposable(politically) possible. And that is precisely what i have been doing.
But this Tolkien amendment will not help us to that end. It will only make our victory even harder.
Indeed such an amendment would be destructive to our cause, by fixing the outlet to the distress on a bar so high as to be practicaly usesless.
It will therefore legitimize the abuses of power, and further legitimize our real salvation which depends entirely upon individual acts to assert individual rights.
When it takes 2/3rds to undo what a mere majority has done you have elevated that Federal majority above that of the super majority of the people and their States.
This amendment is an insult to State’s rights, just as it is an insult to the Republican(constitutional) rights of the minority over the democratically derived tyranny of the majority.
But really in raising the bar even above that set in congress to pass such a bill is really just spiting upon the states and raising the arbitrary supremacy of congress to irreproachable heights.
SO let us leave this oppressive and self-destructive union if that is all the other states think of our rights.
99% of laws increase the size and power of government.
So all previous and future laws must be be made to expire after 3 years. Then if that law is really needed then it will be passed again in 3 years. The problem is once democrats pass a law like Obamacare then it is forever, forever growing government agencies and spending like a cancer.
almost all laws reduce people’s freedoms.Example the law that created and authorize the TSA.
Almost all laws cripple private businesses and so the people's opportunity to get good jobs. Example the law that created the EPA. Now the EPA will use global warming rulings from the Supreme Court to basically shut down and new coal power plants, any new manufacturing, any new factory, etc. Look this up.
Almost all laws have mandatory spending like the laws that mandate social security , medicare ,medicaid that alone mandates over a trillion dollars in annual spending.
You are right.
I just don’t like the way we are so quick to “let’s change something!” Not the brightest minds that want to do that.
And you know, we have an avalanche of mindless laws that come from that same thinking.
We need to hold steady, pray for wisdom, and keep our powder dry.
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