Here are the Blogs in the Constitutional Issues category.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Tea Party Supporters: Don't be Con-Conned
COMMENT: The call, for ANY reason, for a Federal Constitutional Convention is something that Eagle Forum has steadfastly opposed and worked diligently against for years and years. See the links below.
Now, however, it seems that some clever folks have the bright idea to high jack the Tea Party Movement and turn it into an effort to call for a Federal Constitutional Convention. (See article below Eagle Forum links.)
We MUST not let that happen. In the perilous times in which we live to open up our Founding Document like this would be fool hardy and dangerous. The Tea Party Movement has the potential to make a real impact in the political arena in the next few years, especially during th 2010 election cycle, if the energy is channeled in the right direction. Let's not let it get derailed and into the hands of people who do not have the best interest of this country at heart.
To hear Charlie Daniels' message to Mt. Juliet's Tea Party and see pictures from there and from Nashville's Tea Party go HERE
Dec 19, 2008 ... Ohio state legislators this month held a surprise hearing on a resolution calling for a national constitutional convention, ...
Congressmen Need Tutorials On The Constitution
Oct 11, 2006 ... The delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 gave Congress complete authority over the District so that it would be insulated from ...
They will be voting to order Colorado state legislators to pass a resolution calling for a new national Constitutional Convention, which is a very different...
The plan to put initiatives on the ballot to instruct state legislators to vote for a Constitutional Convention (Con Con) for Term Limits is well under way...
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Constitutional Convention Backers Want to Hijack the Tea Party Movement
As most of you already know, the Tax Day Tea Parties were a huge success in terms of number of gatherings (over 850) and total numbers participating (over 1 million according to some sources). From what I observed both in person at our Appleton, Wisconsin Tax Day Tea Party and online at various websites, the Tax Day Tea Parties were, for the most part, a genuine grassroots phenomenon. Just the diversity of signs showed that no one person or organization had planned the messages on the highly individualistic signs.
This spontaneous, grassroots nature of the tea party rallies was the most encouraging aspect of them. At last a broad cross-section of America had had enough with fiscal irresponsibility and excessive, inflationary spending, not to mention exorbitantly high taxes, and felt compelled to gather together in public places to protest out-of-control state and federal governments and the legislators of both parties who brought this problem about in the first place.
Nonetheless, less than two weeks after the tax day rallies, backers of a very dangerous threat to our Constitution have surfaced, and are actively working to have their agenda adopted by the Tea Party Movement’s grassroots organizers. This dangerous threat to our Constitution is none other than that perennial temptation, the constitutional convention, also known widely as a con-con.
A con-con would be convened by Congress in accordance with Article V of the Constitution, if 34 or more state legislatures petition Congress to call such a convention “for proposing amendments.” The dangerous aspect of a con-con is that there’s no way for the state legislatures to ensure that the constitutional convention would restrict itself to consideration of the specific amendment(s) that the state legislatures have based their con-con calls on. Therefore, a constitutional convention could consider and approve a wide range of amendments, never contemplated by the state legislatures who started the whole process. Whichever amendments approved by the constitutional convention that were ratified by three-fourths of the states would become part of the Constitution. Thus, given the huge influence on public opinion exerted by the biased media and political elites, the con-con process could very well result in radical changes in our Constitution which were never intended by the state legislators who called the con-con in the first place.
Here’s “Beware of Article V,” a video the John Birch Society produced in 1999 to help state legislators to understand the high risk to our Constitution involved in petitioning Congress for a con-con. It’s also valuable for informing concerned citizens about this issue. I highly recommend readers of this article take the 36 minutes required to view it or at the very least sample it.
Now back to our story of how enthusiastic backers of a con-con are working to enlist the unsuspecting participants of the Tea Party movement in their very risky con-con project.
On April 23 the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Professor Randy Barnett of Georgetown University, “The Case for a Federalism Amendment: How the Tea Partiers can make Washington pay attention.” In this article, Barnett correctly observed that the Tenth Amendment “sovereignty resolutions,” under consideration by over half the states this year, are not likely to have the slightest impact on the federal courts. From this reasonable observation, Barnett proceeded to assert that “state legislatures have a real power under the Constitution by which to resist the growth of federal power: They can petition Congress for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.”
Barnett then went on to admit that “An amendments convention is feared because its scope cannot be limited in advance.” However, at this point he advocated a dangerous course. He proposed that the “tea-party enthusiasts” adopt the project of getting his Federalism Amendment added to the Constitution and also adopt his strategy of getting enough state legislatures to apply to Congress to call a constitutional convention, so that Congress becomes scared of the prospect of a con-con and agrees to endorse his amendment and present it to the states for ratification.
The problem with this strategy is that there’s no way to ensure that a con-con will not actually be convened in the process of this game of “playing chicken” with Congress with the Constitution at stake.
Next, on April 27 Barnett appeared as a guest on PajamasTV (click on link to view video) with host Michael Patrick Leahy, a leader in the Tea Party Movement. During the four days between his WSJ article of April 23 and his PajamasTV appearance of April 27, Barnett changed his mind about his former strategy of scaring Congress into adopting his amendment with the threat of a con-con. Although he still acknowledges that there is widespread fear of a con-con, and he has some worries about one, he is now convinced that the risks involved with a con-con are worth taking in order to get his 10 amendments presented to the states for ratification. He puts a lot of stock in the requirement that three-fourths of the states are required to ratify whatever amendments might issue from a con-con. He believes this mechanism would surely prevent any truly bad amendment from being ratified.
Of course, this is the crux of the issue. The John Birch Society along with leading constitutional scholars have consistently maintained over the past few decades that there is no way to control what amendments would be considered and adopted by a constitutional convention, and that the requirement that three-fourths of the states must ratify an amendment is not sufficient protection for the Constitution in this age of widespread ignorance of the Constitution and its role in securing our freedoms.
During those same four days, Barnett also changed his project from proposing one amendment, the “Federalism Amendment,” with five parts to proposing ten amendments, to be known as “the Bill of Federalism.”
Read more herePosted on 05/13/2009 6:08 AM by Bobbie Patray
Friday, 27 February 2009
De-Districting
Should the District of Columbia enjoy the full benefits of congressional membership? The Constitution says no.
By the Editors
Congress is on the verge of granting the District of Columbia statehood on the cheap: This week, lawmakers in both chambers are debating a scheme to give the District a permanent seat in the House of Representatives. The bill in question violates the plain meaning of the Constitution and should go no further. For years, Democrats have dreamed of conferring statehood on the District of Columbia, if only because they know it will increase their partisan clout in the Capitol. As with so many large cities, Washington, D.C., is a one-party jurisdiction. Neither its mayor nor a single person on its 13-member city council is currently a Republican. If “New Columbia” were to become the 51st state, it would surely send a delegation of Democrats to the Hill. They would probably live on the left-wing fringes of their party, too. When the District created the position of “shadow senator” in 1990, voters responded by electing Jesse Jackson to this honorary office.
Because efforts to make D.C. a full-fledged state have failed, the city’s political backers have resorted to incremental steps. Much like Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam, the District currently sends a delegate to Congress. The rules governing these posts have changed over the years, but in general delegates have been allowed to vote in committee but not on the floor of the House.
That’s because the Constitution forbids non-states from enjoying this privilege. The senators and congressmen who think otherwise should take a refresher course on Article I, Section 2 and the Fourteenth Amendment: “No Person shall be a Representative who shall not ... be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.” Moreover: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States.”
There was a time when D.C.’s political backers appreciated this prohibition. In 1977, Congress passed a constitutional amendment that would have granted representation to the District — the most direct way of lifting an obvious constitutional ban — but the states failed to ratify it. Years earlier it took the passage of the 23rd Amendment to give District residents the right to vote for president.
Read more here
Posted on 02/27/2009 6:23 AM by Bobbie Patray
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