John De Herrera
New member
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2010
- Messages
- 36
- Reaction score
- 3
- Location
- Santa Barbara, California
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
All fifty states have cast applications for the Article V Convention, so it's currently mandated. Here is a database of 700+ applications found to date (500+ since 1960): Friends of the Article V Convention - Congressional Records
Because the applications are in, this issue is not political, but legal. In other words, according to the rule of law, to be Anti-Conventionist today is to be Anti-Constitutionalist.
Article V has a convention clause, and it’s a right of the people to come together to discuss things politicians won’t. For decades Americans have been frightened away from a convention by politicians and corporate media, implying that if we hold one it opens the Constitution to complete revision, that corporate interests will infiltrate and run away with it, that we’ll end up with a mess, and everything will be lost. But this is completely untrue--the Framers did not place a self-destruct button into the Constitution.
Knowing history, and thus assuming Congress would become a tyranny of the few, the Framers wrote Article V just so, protecting the Constitution from hostile forces. In Article V they were careful to set down three forbidden things:
1) Altering the arrangement known as slavery (a ban that’s since been lifted by both time and war).
2) Altering the arrangement of equal representation of the states in the Senate.
3) Writing a new constitution.
The Framers were keen to avoid using the term “constitutional convention,” and instead wrote, a convention for proposing amendments...to this constitution....
The Article V Convention is limited to proposing amendments to the Constitution we have. The Article V Convention cannot become a constitutional convention, nor can it mandate new laws because whatever ideas put forth must then garner the approval of 38 states in order to be ratified. To get 38 states out of 50 to agree to an idea is very difficult and for good reason: whatever the idea is, whether conservative or liberal, you’ll need to get all of one side signed on, plus at least half the other.
If you yourself were a convention delegate (and why shouldn’t you be--you’re here on the internet politically engaged--concerned enough about the fate of our country), do you think you'd start foaming at the mouth, and try to beat another delegate with your shoe? No, you wouldn't. The gravity of the situation would require calm, rational deliberation. It's corporate elites who have us thinking we'd go to pieces at a convention, when they're the ones who would go to pieces if a convention were called, because it would be the beginning of the end of corporate governance. While some of the negatives of the human condition are greed and corruption, one of the positives is that when people come together consensus happens. It's natural. And as soon as conservatives and liberals come together, they’ll quickly realize, that while they have differences of opinion in some areas, we’re all sick and tired of excessive taxes going to earmarks and government waste, corporate welfare, corporate greed, and the radical double-standard in our lives between those who take and those who give.
If We The People coerce the convention call out of Congress, it means there would have to be special elections for Convention Delegates. Baker v. Carr (“One Man/One Vote”) would apply. Delegates would be elected by the people, not appointed by a governor or state legislature. The model for the Convention would be just like Congress, where each congressional district would elect a delegate, and two delegates would be elected from each state. It would not be the same old two party bickering, and those taking campaign contributions from corporate interests would immediately be suspect. Convention delegates would not be running on time-worn themes like, “It’s time for change in Washington,” they’d be championing ideas on how to limit an out-of-control government, and/or how to right a foundering government, and/or how to give We The People a stronger voice. Why is that so? Because the Article V Convention is about the Constitution, not legislation, not pork, perks, personal power, and politics as usual. Delegates will have to take a stand on what they think a new amendment ought to look like, and be able to defend that position. They won't be able to speak with a forked tongue, and they won’t be able to be vague. They’ll have to be people of integrity, respected in their communities, and once there, they won’t have to worry about who to shake hands with for further campaign contributions.
Upon convening, Delegates would get down to business, and amendment proposals would suffer debate and deliberation, the same as any proposed in Congress. After a week or two, proposals of broad support would emerge, they’d be sent to Congress to be forwarded to the states, and the convention would adjourn. Delegates would go back to private citizenship, and the ratification process would begin. Do you think members of Congress, and all other corporate interests want this process to take place? To have the whole nation engaged in how to reverse the trends most of us see as fatal?
In terms of political science, all revolutions, reformations, and movements for truth and justice the world over, have always come down to one thing: a tipping-point. Once enough people recognize the solution, it’s over for that which stands in its way.
A phrase we all remember from History class in grade school is: "The British are coming." Well, this time it's not the British, it's a legal fiction known as a corporation. It's here, and its power is growing towards an inevitable conclusion--which is that the vast majority of American citizens become slaves.
The U.S. Congress, funded by corporate interests, the Federal Reserve, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Bilderberg group, nor the World Trade Organization are figments of the imagination. These institutions and organizations exist and the individuals within them--whether they’re conscious of it or not--are going to turn this entire globe towards.... Things don't just happen willy-nilly out there in the world, each day we're moved towards an inevitable conclusion.
How do we expect Congress to issue the call for the Article V Convention? It won't, and never will, unless and until enough Americans become cognizant of it as the solution. All we need is a tipping-point, somewhere between 10-20 million Americans with it in mind. If you put "Article V Convention" into a Google Alert, you'll find it's on the rise, Americans are thinking of it. Still out of ignorance and/or misinformation many more are afraid of it. If those who died in the American Revolutionary War came back here today, they'd look at some of us, backhand the pacifier out of our mouth, and crack us a good one with the butt of their musket (or a broom handle or big wooden spoon as the case may be, as women as well died winning the freedoms we all enjoy today). They'd say, "What are doing? Get out there and start talking convention." Send letters, faxes, telegrams, call into radio shows, and inform others of this right. And of course, if they show their face, ask your congressional representative about it in person.
What’s our best hope once the convention is called? The amendment we need more than anything right away is one that secures the electoral process from private/corporate interests so the will of the people is transparent, accurately expressed, and thus LOUD. Why have a dozen different kinds of private voting machines when we ought to have the official U.S. Voting Unit, built to specification, paper trail, and all? Right now we’re forced to trust that privately owned ES&S/Diebold aren't engineering results, as they now tally 80%+ of all votes cast nationwide.
If you have fifty people in a room, and everyone is relying on each other to get their data straight--you wouldn't say, "Hey Joe from Idaho, go register voters and count your votes how you think best. Mary from Alabama, you do it how you want...." No. We’d say, OK this is how we’re all registering voters, and this is how we're all tallying votes. By creating uniform standards for voting/voter registration we reduce the points of failure and increase accuracy. We have federal standards for food and drugs, why not The Vote? That’s our voice, indeed that’s the foundation of our freedom, because if you don’t have transparent elections, you don’t have a free society. The two are one and the same thing. When all is said and done, such a non-partisan amendment concerned with electoral reform is the likely the only thing to possibly be ratified today with everyone so divided about everything else.
We’re all taught that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are our two most important founding documents. What we’re not taught is that the former was written into the latter--the Article V Convention. The genius of the Constitution is that it provides for a peaceable reformation.
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803): "It cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect."
The convention clause of Article V is not without effect.
Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304 (1816): "The government of the United States can claim no powers which are not granted to it by the Constitution."
No branch of government has the power to question the validity of a state application for the Article V Convention.
Prigg v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842): "[The] Court may not construe the Constitution so as to defeat its obvious ends when another construction, equally accordant with the words and sense thereof, will enforce and protect them."
To question the validity of a state's application attempts to construe and defeat the obvious ends of the convention clause.
Dodge v. Woolsey, 59 U.S. 331 (1855): "The departments of the government are legislative, executive and judicial. They are coordinate in degree to the extent of the powers delegated to each of them. Each, in the exercise of its powers, is independent of the other, but all, right-fully done by either, is binding upon the others. The constitution is supreme over all of them, because the people who ratified it have made it so; consequently, any thing which may be done unauthorized by it is unlawful."
The three branches of government are unauthorized to question the validity of a state application because the power to do so does not exist. In fact, according to Federalist 85, the saving grace of the Constitution is the prohibition of such a power. The validity/effect of each state application is based solely on its having been cast.
Jarrolt v. Moberly, 103 U.S. 580 (1880): "A constitutional provision should not be construed so as to defeat its evident purpose, but rather so as to give it effective operation and suppress the mischief at which it was aimed."
To attempt to question the validity of a state application, either through its contemporaneousness or subject matter, is to attempt to defeat its purpose and allow the mischief at which it’s aimed to suppress.
U.S. v Sprague, 282 U.S. 716 (1931): "Where intention of words and phrases used in Constitution is clear, there is no room for construction [re-interpretation] and no excuse for interpolation."
Any attempt at construction or interpolation as to the validity of state applications runs counter to the intention of the words used in Article V.
Ullmann v. U.S., 350 U.S. 422 (1956): "Nothing new can be put into the constitution except through the amendatory process, and nothing old can be taken out without the same process."
There's nothing in the Constitution which places any stricture in any way whatsoever on the validity of state applications for a convention. If Anti-Conventionists wish to limit the validity/effect of a state's application, they must propose such an amendment and then work to have that amendment ratified.
Ullmann v. U.S., 350 U.S. 422 (1956): "As no constitutional guarantee enjoys preference, so none should suffer subordination or deletion."
The constitutional guarantee to a national convention is currently suffering subordination. Based on the rule of law the Article V Convention is mandated, which means every Congress is in violation of the U.S. Constitution until the Article V Convention is convoked.
Further Reading:
The Last Prerogative
http://www.article-5.org/file.php/1/...rerogative.pdf
Return To Philadelphia
http://www.article-5.org/file.php/1/...iladelphia.pdf
Because the applications are in, this issue is not political, but legal. In other words, according to the rule of law, to be Anti-Conventionist today is to be Anti-Constitutionalist.
Article V has a convention clause, and it’s a right of the people to come together to discuss things politicians won’t. For decades Americans have been frightened away from a convention by politicians and corporate media, implying that if we hold one it opens the Constitution to complete revision, that corporate interests will infiltrate and run away with it, that we’ll end up with a mess, and everything will be lost. But this is completely untrue--the Framers did not place a self-destruct button into the Constitution.
Knowing history, and thus assuming Congress would become a tyranny of the few, the Framers wrote Article V just so, protecting the Constitution from hostile forces. In Article V they were careful to set down three forbidden things:
1) Altering the arrangement known as slavery (a ban that’s since been lifted by both time and war).
2) Altering the arrangement of equal representation of the states in the Senate.
3) Writing a new constitution.
The Framers were keen to avoid using the term “constitutional convention,” and instead wrote, a convention for proposing amendments...to this constitution....
The Article V Convention is limited to proposing amendments to the Constitution we have. The Article V Convention cannot become a constitutional convention, nor can it mandate new laws because whatever ideas put forth must then garner the approval of 38 states in order to be ratified. To get 38 states out of 50 to agree to an idea is very difficult and for good reason: whatever the idea is, whether conservative or liberal, you’ll need to get all of one side signed on, plus at least half the other.
If you yourself were a convention delegate (and why shouldn’t you be--you’re here on the internet politically engaged--concerned enough about the fate of our country), do you think you'd start foaming at the mouth, and try to beat another delegate with your shoe? No, you wouldn't. The gravity of the situation would require calm, rational deliberation. It's corporate elites who have us thinking we'd go to pieces at a convention, when they're the ones who would go to pieces if a convention were called, because it would be the beginning of the end of corporate governance. While some of the negatives of the human condition are greed and corruption, one of the positives is that when people come together consensus happens. It's natural. And as soon as conservatives and liberals come together, they’ll quickly realize, that while they have differences of opinion in some areas, we’re all sick and tired of excessive taxes going to earmarks and government waste, corporate welfare, corporate greed, and the radical double-standard in our lives between those who take and those who give.
If We The People coerce the convention call out of Congress, it means there would have to be special elections for Convention Delegates. Baker v. Carr (“One Man/One Vote”) would apply. Delegates would be elected by the people, not appointed by a governor or state legislature. The model for the Convention would be just like Congress, where each congressional district would elect a delegate, and two delegates would be elected from each state. It would not be the same old two party bickering, and those taking campaign contributions from corporate interests would immediately be suspect. Convention delegates would not be running on time-worn themes like, “It’s time for change in Washington,” they’d be championing ideas on how to limit an out-of-control government, and/or how to right a foundering government, and/or how to give We The People a stronger voice. Why is that so? Because the Article V Convention is about the Constitution, not legislation, not pork, perks, personal power, and politics as usual. Delegates will have to take a stand on what they think a new amendment ought to look like, and be able to defend that position. They won't be able to speak with a forked tongue, and they won’t be able to be vague. They’ll have to be people of integrity, respected in their communities, and once there, they won’t have to worry about who to shake hands with for further campaign contributions.
Upon convening, Delegates would get down to business, and amendment proposals would suffer debate and deliberation, the same as any proposed in Congress. After a week or two, proposals of broad support would emerge, they’d be sent to Congress to be forwarded to the states, and the convention would adjourn. Delegates would go back to private citizenship, and the ratification process would begin. Do you think members of Congress, and all other corporate interests want this process to take place? To have the whole nation engaged in how to reverse the trends most of us see as fatal?
In terms of political science, all revolutions, reformations, and movements for truth and justice the world over, have always come down to one thing: a tipping-point. Once enough people recognize the solution, it’s over for that which stands in its way.
A phrase we all remember from History class in grade school is: "The British are coming." Well, this time it's not the British, it's a legal fiction known as a corporation. It's here, and its power is growing towards an inevitable conclusion--which is that the vast majority of American citizens become slaves.
The U.S. Congress, funded by corporate interests, the Federal Reserve, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Bilderberg group, nor the World Trade Organization are figments of the imagination. These institutions and organizations exist and the individuals within them--whether they’re conscious of it or not--are going to turn this entire globe towards.... Things don't just happen willy-nilly out there in the world, each day we're moved towards an inevitable conclusion.
How do we expect Congress to issue the call for the Article V Convention? It won't, and never will, unless and until enough Americans become cognizant of it as the solution. All we need is a tipping-point, somewhere between 10-20 million Americans with it in mind. If you put "Article V Convention" into a Google Alert, you'll find it's on the rise, Americans are thinking of it. Still out of ignorance and/or misinformation many more are afraid of it. If those who died in the American Revolutionary War came back here today, they'd look at some of us, backhand the pacifier out of our mouth, and crack us a good one with the butt of their musket (or a broom handle or big wooden spoon as the case may be, as women as well died winning the freedoms we all enjoy today). They'd say, "What are doing? Get out there and start talking convention." Send letters, faxes, telegrams, call into radio shows, and inform others of this right. And of course, if they show their face, ask your congressional representative about it in person.
What’s our best hope once the convention is called? The amendment we need more than anything right away is one that secures the electoral process from private/corporate interests so the will of the people is transparent, accurately expressed, and thus LOUD. Why have a dozen different kinds of private voting machines when we ought to have the official U.S. Voting Unit, built to specification, paper trail, and all? Right now we’re forced to trust that privately owned ES&S/Diebold aren't engineering results, as they now tally 80%+ of all votes cast nationwide.
If you have fifty people in a room, and everyone is relying on each other to get their data straight--you wouldn't say, "Hey Joe from Idaho, go register voters and count your votes how you think best. Mary from Alabama, you do it how you want...." No. We’d say, OK this is how we’re all registering voters, and this is how we're all tallying votes. By creating uniform standards for voting/voter registration we reduce the points of failure and increase accuracy. We have federal standards for food and drugs, why not The Vote? That’s our voice, indeed that’s the foundation of our freedom, because if you don’t have transparent elections, you don’t have a free society. The two are one and the same thing. When all is said and done, such a non-partisan amendment concerned with electoral reform is the likely the only thing to possibly be ratified today with everyone so divided about everything else.
We’re all taught that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are our two most important founding documents. What we’re not taught is that the former was written into the latter--the Article V Convention. The genius of the Constitution is that it provides for a peaceable reformation.
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803): "It cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect."
The convention clause of Article V is not without effect.
Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304 (1816): "The government of the United States can claim no powers which are not granted to it by the Constitution."
No branch of government has the power to question the validity of a state application for the Article V Convention.
Prigg v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842): "[The] Court may not construe the Constitution so as to defeat its obvious ends when another construction, equally accordant with the words and sense thereof, will enforce and protect them."
To question the validity of a state's application attempts to construe and defeat the obvious ends of the convention clause.
Dodge v. Woolsey, 59 U.S. 331 (1855): "The departments of the government are legislative, executive and judicial. They are coordinate in degree to the extent of the powers delegated to each of them. Each, in the exercise of its powers, is independent of the other, but all, right-fully done by either, is binding upon the others. The constitution is supreme over all of them, because the people who ratified it have made it so; consequently, any thing which may be done unauthorized by it is unlawful."
The three branches of government are unauthorized to question the validity of a state application because the power to do so does not exist. In fact, according to Federalist 85, the saving grace of the Constitution is the prohibition of such a power. The validity/effect of each state application is based solely on its having been cast.
Jarrolt v. Moberly, 103 U.S. 580 (1880): "A constitutional provision should not be construed so as to defeat its evident purpose, but rather so as to give it effective operation and suppress the mischief at which it was aimed."
To attempt to question the validity of a state application, either through its contemporaneousness or subject matter, is to attempt to defeat its purpose and allow the mischief at which it’s aimed to suppress.
U.S. v Sprague, 282 U.S. 716 (1931): "Where intention of words and phrases used in Constitution is clear, there is no room for construction [re-interpretation] and no excuse for interpolation."
Any attempt at construction or interpolation as to the validity of state applications runs counter to the intention of the words used in Article V.
Ullmann v. U.S., 350 U.S. 422 (1956): "Nothing new can be put into the constitution except through the amendatory process, and nothing old can be taken out without the same process."
There's nothing in the Constitution which places any stricture in any way whatsoever on the validity of state applications for a convention. If Anti-Conventionists wish to limit the validity/effect of a state's application, they must propose such an amendment and then work to have that amendment ratified.
Ullmann v. U.S., 350 U.S. 422 (1956): "As no constitutional guarantee enjoys preference, so none should suffer subordination or deletion."
The constitutional guarantee to a national convention is currently suffering subordination. Based on the rule of law the Article V Convention is mandated, which means every Congress is in violation of the U.S. Constitution until the Article V Convention is convoked.
Further Reading:
The Last Prerogative
http://www.article-5.org/file.php/1/...rerogative.pdf
Return To Philadelphia
http://www.article-5.org/file.php/1/...iladelphia.pdf