Even if you slept through high school civics, you know that our system of govt is based on checks and balances. The President has veto power to check Congress. Congress can override a veto to check the President. The Supreme Court can check Congress by declaring laws unconstitutional. Congress can check the Supreme Court by amending the Constitution. These are lateral checks and balances among the branches of the federal govt. Now even if you didnt sleep through civics class, you may not know that the founders of this nation also built in vertical checks on the federal govt by the States. We all know that Congress can amend the Constitution, but the States can as well. And if 2/3 of the States call for a constitutional convention, no branch of the federal govt has the authority to stop it. The framers were clear on this. The outcome of the convention would be amendments that would then be sent to the 50 States for ratification. Any amendment ratified by at least 38 States would become part of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. The States will have collectively flexed their muscle by reasserting a power they always had but never used. Single-digit Congressional approval ratings suggest there may be something that the left and right can actually agree on: that Washington is broken, unresponsive, and out of control. And when something is broken, it cant fix itself. Thankfully, the founding fathers were prescient; they knew and feared the possibility of power becoming centralized in the federal govt. Above liberty, they valued little else, and they recognized that an out of control federal govt was one of the greatest threats to it. So they wrote into our Constitution that second mode for amending it. Now its time to use it. Our country, our liberty, our way of life has been secured (thus far) by those who gave the last full measure of devotion. They paid with their lives so that all we would have to do is write a letter and share a post. Those who have given their all have nothing left to give. It is now up to us to heed those words first spoken a century and a half ago: that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. nwitimes/news/local/govt-and-politics/indiana-senate-leader-working-toward-u-s-constitutional-convention/article_21f801b9-2ea4-56a5-b0d4-e3ea00b10968.html
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 07:17:42 +0000
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