As always, Jacquerie, an excellent treatise.
I would only add the following, that the Founders gave the Senate the exclusive power to approve US Supreme Court appointments.
Thus, in the Framers’ vision, the states, through their Senators, were the final arbiters of who was to determine which laws were constitutional and which ones were not. Removing the check of the state legislatures from the votes of their Senators during SCOTUS confirmation hearings stripped the states of their power to have a voice in the process and left it entirely in the hands of one branch of the federal government, the U.S. Senate.
The Seventeenth Amendment has not only taken from the people in the states and their legislators the power to immediately determine and control their own representation in the Senate, but it provides a wall of separation and protection from redress to a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Senate, one a privilege and the other a power, neither of which the Founders ever intended nor would consent to today.
Congress will never repeal the Seventeenth... it’s left to us, the people in the states. To add your voice to the call for a Convention of States, sign this petition ==> http://www.cosaction.com/?recruiter_id=2348
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