Posted on 03/04/2014 1:42:48 PM PST by dontreadthis
SM 476: Amendments to the Constitution of the United States MEMORIAL by Hays
Amendments to the Constitution of the United States; Applying to Congress to call a convention for the sole purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States which impose fiscal restraints on the Federal Government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the Federal Government, and limit the terms of office for federal officials and members of Congress, etc.
Last Action: 3/4/2014 Senate - Introduced Location: In committee/council (RC) Bill Text: Web Page | PDF
Article V ping.
Article V ping!
The amendatory process under Article V consists of three steps: Proposal, Disposal, and Ratification.
Proposal:
There are two ways to propose an amendment to the Constitution.
Article V gives Congress and an Amendments Convention exactly the same power to propose amendments, no more and no less.
Disposal:
Once Congress, or an Amendments Convention, proposes amendments, Congress must decide whether the states will ratify by the:
The State Ratifying Convention Method has only been used twice: once to ratify the Constitution, and once to ratify the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition.
Ratification:
Depending upon which ratification method is chosen by Congress, either the state legislatures vote up-or-down on the proposed amendment, or the voters elect a state ratifying convention to vote up-or-down. If three-quarters of the states vote to ratify, the amendment becomes part of the Constitution.
Forbidden Subjects:
Article V contains two explicitly forbidden subjects and one implicitly forbidden subject.
Explicitly forbidden:
Implicitly forbidden:
I have two reference works for those interested.
The first is from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative pro-business group. This document has been sent to every state legislator in the country.
Proposing Constitutional Amendments by a Convention of the States: A Handbook for State Lawmakers
The second is a 1973 report from the American Bar Association attempting to identify gray areas in the amendatory process to include an Amendments Convention. It represents the view of the ruling class of 40 years ago. While I dislike some of their conclusions, they have laid out the precedents that may justify those conclusions. What I respect is the comprehensive job they did in locating all the gray areas. They went so far as to identify a gray area that didn't pop up until the Equal Rights Amendment crashed and burned a decade later. Even if you find yourself in disagreement with their vision, it's worth reading to see the view of the ruling class toward the process.
Report of the ABA Special Constitutional Convention Study Committee
Article V ping!
If I correctly understand the FL House and FL Senate websites, identical memorials will be presented to both houses for consideration.
There is more news out of Georgia today.
The Georgia Senate had previously passed Senate Resolution 736;
and the Georgia House had previously passed House Resolution 1215.
As far as I could determine, the two were were worded identically.
Today the Georgia House Judiciary Committee voted to send SR736
to the floor for approval of the full House.
I suspect this Article V movement will burst like a tsunami on our political shores when the states next meet in Indiana this coming June.
Primaries and elections may drown it out; and that may be a good thing.
I would like for it to fly under the radar of the national media for a while.
The two Democratic senators from Maryland, Brewster and Tydings, argued that the legislatures that submitted the petitions were mal-apportioned by the rules of Reynolds, and thus Congress could safely ignore the petitions. One of the Maryland senators said that Congress could and should refuse to call a convention because the courts lacked the ability to force Congress to do anything. (This was before the Powell decision where the Supreme Court did just that.)
The other senator from Illinois, the Republican Chuck Percy, said that an Amendments Convention would be controlled by the worst elements in American politics, by which he meant conservatives. He argued in favor of ignoring the petitions.
Dirksen's death in 1969 took the wind out of the sails of the movement, and it died. But what happened in 1967 showed that when it came to federal power, there was no Democratic or Republican party, just the Uniparty, and Congress would create whatever roadblocks it could get away with.
Once Congress is sufficiently terrified of the coming tsunami, I would expect the Dirksen bill and later versions of it written by the late Sam Ervin and Orrin Hatch to be pulled out of dusty filing boxes in a warehouse similar to the one Spielberg used for the storage of the Ark of the Covenant. That old ABA Report will be pulled off FR by some enterprising opposition research geek and sent out to be the template of a new bill to regulate an Amendments Convention. I doubt it will get past the House even if it gets past the Senate. Fortunately, the states have laid down the legal reasoning that would prevent Congress from regulating an Amendments Convention under ancient precedents left over from the Founding.
Unlike so many skeptics, I think this will work out for the better. At minimum, it will get these issues out in the open, and C-SPAN's gavel-to-gavel coverage will educate a whole generation of Americans about the federalism we lost as a result of the Civil War and the new Deal.
Don’t give Obama a path to destroying the Constitution. If you open the door, he’ll find a way to get past any safeguards and take away our rights.
Speaking of ancient precedents, if the uniparty refuses to call an amendment convention after thirty-four states submit identical applications, what constitutional force can be called to physically prevent the states from meeting?
Nothing in the constitution prevents the states from assembling. Many state legislators get together every year at ALEC or NCSL and last December at Mount Vernon, so not only the pre-1787 precedent, but the modern habit of meeting outside of congressional/judicial oversight is well established.
In any event, I look forward to the day the left media take us on. When they do, the battle will finally be waged on our terms, not theirs.
If the states meet outside the time and place set by Congress, the Proposal Function under Article V has not been legally fulfilled. This means that Congress is under no obligation to fulfill the Disposal Function, where it decides whether the states will ratify via the State Legislature Method or the State Ratifying Convention method. That stops the amendatory process in its tracks.
This is why it is important that all involved in the amendatory process do their constitutional duty.
There is one precedent where certain New England states met to discuss secession during the War of 1812 in a meeting not authorized by Congress. This was the famous Hartford Convention. President Madison sent the Army into Hartford, not to break up the convention, but to intimidate it.
I have two reference works for those interested.
please do, I would like to see documentation that the Constitution is locked in place, no one has shown me any documentation to that effect, only opinions.
I hope I am wrong, but I believe this movement is playing with fire over an open pan of gasoline. As much as I've studied I can't find anything to prove otherwise.
Even at an amendment-convention the amendments would need to pass on a 3/4 majority by the States... that's something like 38 states.
If we're at the point where 38 States will knowingly swallow poison ([to] take away our rights) we're already done for.
Today,
the Georgia House of Representatives approved of
the Georgia Senate’s SR 736 by a vote of 107 - 58.
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