Posted on 08/22/2013 1:05:12 PM PDT by Red Badger
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., explained to a town hall of his constituents that he wanted to call a national Constitutional Convention after reading Mark Levin’s new book, The Liberty Amendments.
“I used to have a great fear of constitutional conventions,” Coburn said according to the Tulsa World. “I have a great fear now of not having one.”
As the Tulsa World notes, a national convention is called by two-thirds of the state legislatures and is one of two ways the U.S. Constitution can be amended.
Coburn made his remarks in Muskogee, Okla.
“I’m not so sure about that. The original Constitutional Convention was not supposed to completely rewrite the Articles of Confederation either, but it did anyway.”
That is true, but the convention still had to submit their plan to the Continental Congress. And then the Congress submitted the plan to the states, who each had a convention to approve or dispprove. I still comes down to the state legislatures to approve any and all changes.
Any you think it'll be nothing but rock-ribbed conservatives? You're kidding yourself.
That means it’s up to you to explain how they would be allowed to do it.
I'll defer to you to explain how it will be prevented.
I hope people are not underestimating the level of socialist power we now face. If an amendment is proposed that requires ethnically-based government such as “all government services must be provided proportionate to the ethnic percentages of the general population”, such an amendment would be hard to stop. Any opposition would be vilified and a great proportion of the population, based on what they were taught in govt school, would think this, or something equally as divisive and damaging, was great.
What if citizenship is granted based on the immigrant’s certifying only that he or she is “tired, poor, hungry and yearning to be free”. Idiotic, yes, but how do you oppose such an amendment?
Or, “all powers of defense shall be placed solely in the hands of government personnel”. You lose your basic human rights to self-defense and become totally under govt control. This one would be harder to pass but the political power and money to remove 2nd amendment human rights has been and will continue to be severe.
Perhaps, “the ability to afford housing, food, clothing, or medical care shall not be a barrier to these necessities of life.” This is essentially European.
Another, “income cannot exceed 10 times the income of the lowest paid worker.”
There is enough popular appeal to these inanities that a large proportion of the population might support them. Of course, I like shifting the power to the states and people, and I would propose an amendment changing the representation of the people so that a representative would always have a fixed number of people to represent—that number represented in 1787. I would also increase the scope of self-defense and explicitly bar govt from infringing the right to both keep and bear any technology of self-defense (which is already a fundamental amendment infringed with impunity and in near totality). I would also support an amendment that no tax at the federal level could exceed taxation at the state level—state’s should be more important than distant federal influence—and that state taxation should be severely restricted including no taxation of the labors of an individual, barring any form of servitude to govt. Just my 2 cents.
If you think elections are fraudulent imagine the effort to stack the convention with libs and RINOS. This would be a major catastrophe in this current climate.
I have a better idea, our current elected officials actually adhering to the letter of the Constitution as is is written.
17th is just as bad.
I think you meant ‘do de-fund’..........
As it should be........
Agreed. I would like to see more DemocRAT graft and corruption come to light and snowball before recommending this option. Still it may be wise to prepare for that possibility.
Agreed. A con-con is a nuclear device of unimaginable destructive power. It is not a panacea that will right all wrongs or fix everything. Once you open up a con-con, you could find yourself in a far worse position than what you started with. First off, the governor of the state will appoint the delegates in accordance with the numbers of electoral college votes he's alloted. Think of the huge electoral college states: California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Texas. Not many of those can be considered bastions of conservatism. Once a con-con has been opened there are no restraints on what can be changed in the document. There is no such thing as a limited con-con. You could alter or junk the entire document. How many potential delegates would you put on a par with the Founding Fathers? That group was assembled by God Almighty for the sole purpose of advancing HIS future agenda (among other things, the eventual creation of the State of Israel and the subsequent lighting the fuse to the End of Days) and we shall not see men or women of their quality and patriotism ever again.
IMO a Con Con at this time would result in the possible loss of the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 10th ammemdments.
As I stated before its a bad idea to the 10th power. Levin has not thought this through.
The only 2 ways back for this republic are through the 10th ammendment with the sovereign states or the bullet box. Sad but true.
This could easily end the last remnant of the Republic.
Thanks! Wish folks on this thread would watch this...lots of good info and answers.
I find that arguable, however, it is the IRS who are in the news and most detested now. Seems to me that the 16th, without which the IRS would be of no need, is the best and most effective amendment to attempt to repeal.
If the funding dries up, the federal government will be forced to retreat back inside the Constitutional cage our founders took great pains to ensure contained it.
The secretive Jekyll Island machinations at the start of the last century released it through the eventual passage of the 16th and 17th ammendments.
Caveat: I have not read all of the comments in the thread before posting this.
The ignorance of some people is breathtaking. I cannot believe that something so obvious could be so easily misunderstood. It is NOT a Constitutional Convention! It is am Amendnment Convention, to propose amendments to the constitution. For those who think the constition is a “living, breathing” document, here is where it can be brought back to life.
An Amendment Convention is called by 2/3’s of state legislatures at the same time. It would take 34 states to even get it started. All 50 states get to send delegates.
It only provides for proposing amendments. Proposing! The convention does not cause the amendments to start right then. They have to be ratified. That takes 3/4’s of the states. It could be any or all of the 50 states, not necessarily the ones that proposed the convention. It would take 38 states to ratify them.
The amendments would each, have to be ratified individually on their own. They could propose 20 amendments, and as few as none or as many as 20 could be ratified. 38 states would have to raitify to make them binding on the other 12.
It boils done to a few simple rules. 34 states institute a convention. 50 states send delegates. Amendments are proposed, and presented for ratification by a majority of the delegates. 38 states would ratify them. If any were heinous enough, it would only take 13 states to shoot them down. If any were attractive enough, it would take 38 states to get them added to the constitution. That alone is formidable enough.
Think of how hard it was to create ObamaDemocratCare. They had majorities in both houses, and it was a tough road for them. However, they did manage to do it. Now, think of what a radical change that was to our whole way of life. It was a simple majority of Congress that put our economy in shambles. Even though it was hard for them to accomplish, it was still way too easy. If Congress becomes all Democrat again, we will all be terribly screwed forever.
I do not see the danger in proposing amendments. It is a wisdom of the framers seeing that Congress and Washington could get so big that they could no longer restrain themselves. What would we do short of a bloody revolution at that point? Remember, we are the United STATES of America, and as States, we can go to Washington and spank them.
Our only other recourse, outside of bloody revolution, which I totally don’t want to see, is trying to get enough Conservatives elected to Congress to make laws that would restrain Washington, but that is iffy at best. We are up against a media that calls Tea Party people terrorists and racists. Nobody gets to stand up and say hey we are not racists or terrorists. The media says it and there is no rebuttal.
Then people get elected saying they will change the way things are done in Washington. When they get there, they get to ride in private jets and get taken to dinner every night where the main course is filet mignon, every single day. It is hard to resist that temptation. That’s why Jesus said, lead us not into temptation. We are all only human, and temptation can lead us astray, even when we know better and intend differently. And when he is eating steak every night, hell, even every day at lunch, and getting rid of a department of government might result in the loss of a committee assignment, suddenly we might see a Marco Rubio-type becoming pro of that department. They might have campaigned promising to get rid of it.
So, really, someone might actually propose an amendment eliminating the second amendment. And someone else might propose an amendment getting rid of the 16th amendment. And somebody might propose an amendment placing term limits on Supreme Court justices. And somebody might propose an amendment requiring a presidential candidate to provide a birth certificate before being nominated. That’s four right there. Then, each state would have a vote on each amendment and it would take 38 states to pass any one of them. I doubt if any of them would pass. I would pass 3 of them myself if it were up to me.
The President is elected by only half of the people. After seeing what one President can do by ignoring the Constitution, why would amending that constitution make it any worse? Not to mention the fact that it is only the 27th amendment which will make him leave. It takes a constitutional amendment to end a presidential administration.
Thank you. You’ve pretty much said what Mark Levin is saying.
Thank you ! You explained much better than I did in my posts 180 and 181. This is SO important for everyone to understand before they trash the whole idea.
Can you please clarify how many delegates each state sends? My understanding is one per state , but many on FR think it would be based on population like house of reps or electoral college. Many dismiss the whole idea on that basis alone.(they figure more populous staetes are veryliberal and would skew the amendments towards very bad proposals ).
My understanding is that apportionment for the amendment convention is not specified in the constitution so that can be decided by the states. I think to truly represent the states it should be one for one for one .
Can you clarify?
Please see Post #15 and print off the two documents to which I’ve linked.
Have you ever got that right; the current Boobus Americanus ruling class is an entirely different species.
All I can picture is them approaching the Constitution the same way the ape-like creatures in "2001" regarded the monolith. Its destruction is almost assured.
We'll never see the likes of these giants again:
Thanks will do that.
Question : you said there were differences in the two documents that Congress would need to sort out. My question, if this is meant to bypass Congress do they (Congress)have the authority to decide? Or is it entirely up to the states as to how the amendment proposal gathering should be ordered?
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