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To: Repeal The 17th; bfh333; Hostage; Publius; Kaosinla; UriÂ’el-2012; C210N; Strawberry AZ
Thank you for the correction. I had been operating under misinformation. I should have read more closely. The convention only proposes amendments. The amendments still have to go through the same ratification process as those proposed by Congress.

Now, here are some questions:

Is it possible to keep the Convention limited only to particular amendments?

Is it possible for the Left to co-opt the convention and propose amendments of their own?

75 posted on 04/13/2014 7:06:54 PM PDT by EveningStar
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To: EveningStar
By the basic principles of contract law, an Amendments Convention is restricted to the subject of its calling, which is enumerated by Congress when it calls the Convention, i.e. sets time and place. Congress takes the language of the petitions calling for the convention and places it in the convention call. In parliamentary terms, it becomes part of a joint resolution of Congress.

If a proposed amendment outside the legal purview of the convention is introduced, it is the duty of the presiding officer to rule such a proposal out of order and gavel down the delegate who introduces it. If the delegate appeals the decision of the chair to the floor, it is the sworn duty of the delegates not to take such a proposal up for consideration. Bottom line: the kind of runaway convention feared by so many is outside the law.

Delegates to an Amendments Convention would be chosen by the state legislatures. I see no way this could be hijacked by the Left unless the majority of legislatures were controlled by the Left.

Keep in mind that there is one absolute fail-safe. If you go back to that long pedantic opus I added to this thread about how the amendatory process works, you'll see that it would take three-fourths of the state legislatures (or state ratifying conventions, if Congress so chooses) to ratify anything out of an Amendments Convention to get it into the Constitution. In brutal math, that means that if 13 states say no to the product of a convention, that amendment is dead.

There is no chance that a convention would agree to repeal or weaken the 2nd Amendment, and there is absolutely no chance that 38 states would ratify such foolishness.

77 posted on 04/13/2014 7:19:31 PM PDT by Publius ("Who is John Galt?" by Billthedrill and Publius now available at Amazon.)
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