Posted on 04/11/2010 7:35:57 AM PDT by GregNH
Short of a military dictatorship, I don’t imagine any elected official, conservative or not, with that much chutzpah. Likewise, the process for making laws is designed to prevent new laws from being passed—but this cuts both ways as being tremendously difficult and time consuming to get rid of bad laws as well.
But the individual States are outside of the system. As such, they would not be “removing their own appendix”, but working as a surgeon works on a patient. In addition, the say of a convention is final, and cannot be appealed through the ponderous federal courts.
This has to be such a certainty, that after the 38 States have ratified the new constitution, that the convention remains seated to insure that the changes are carried out, having the power to relieve and replace federal officials and officers who refuse to obey the new law.
Ironically, this is almost required, because of the Writ of Mandamus argument. That is, what if there is a new constitution, and the president refuses to follow it, and congress refuses to impeach him? In this case, the convention could remove him from office with a simple majority vote, and appoint a replacement who agrees to carry out the will of the States.
The bottom line is that this will never be frivolous. America will have to be in a deep crisis before the States will do this.
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