Herman: Senator wants Texas to rescind all requests for a constitutional convention

[Forever_frost]

Remember in 1972 when Texas lawmakers called for a constitutional convention to consider amending our nation’s guiding document to say, “No student shall be assigned to nor compelled to attend any particular public school on account of race, religion, color or national origin.”
Nope, I don’t remember it either.

And do you remember other legislative actions, dating back to 1899, calling for constitutional conventions on topics such as a balanced federal budget, Electoral College changes and legislative apportionment?

Nope, I don’t remember those either.

But Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, is afraid somebody does, so he’s pushing Senate Joint Resolution 53 to rescind every request ever made by Texas to call a constitutional convention for anything. You know all that stuff we said about that stuff? Nevermind, says Estes.

There are two ways to amend the U.S. Constitution. Congress can propose a change and seek ratification from three-fourths of the states. That’s happened 27 times. Or two-thirds of the states can call for a constitutional convention. We’ve had one of those. It was in 1787, and it produced our Constitution.

Since then, lots of states have called for constitutional conventions on specific topics. The two-thirds threshold never has been reached, but lots of requests remain on the books. That’s what worries Estes.

“The point here is that (constitutional) conventions are serious and uncertain events and before we trigger one we need to be absolutely sure of what we do,” he told the Senate State Affairs Committee this week. “By rescinding all of our outstanding requests we (will) have avoided a convention triggered by an old request that has been sitting on the books, forgotten for over 100 years.”

I’ve seen various lists, but it looks like we have 10 to 14 pending requests for constitutional conventions.

Estes’ concern about what might go on at such a gathering is not a new one. In 1988, retired U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger, then chairman of the bicentennial commemoration of the Constitution, wrote that there’d be “no effective way to limit or muzzle” a constitutional convention, which would be a “free-for-all for special-interest groups, television coverage and press speculation.” (Or what some us call solid entertainment.)

Estes wants to erase anything on the Texas books that could contribute to such goings-on. Good idea, said Kelly Holt of Smithville, representing the John Birch Society, who told the Senate committee that a constitutional convention would “have the power to completely trash our existing Constitution and replace it with a completely new and perhaps very different document.”

“Our modern leaders cannot even adhere to the Constitution we have,” she said, “and would very likely abuse the opportunity to create a new one.”

Estes calls his measure the “Gregory Watson Bill” after a longtime legislative aide who brought the matter to the senator’s attention. Watson, a non-lawyer, is an expert on constitutional amendments. He’s the father of one.

In 1982, Watson, working on a college assignment, came upon a proposed congressional pay raise constitutional amendment that had been awaiting ratification since 1789. Under James Madison’s proposal, such raises could not take effect “until an election of representatives shall have intervened.”

Watson worked to get it ratified. The first state to endorse it had been Maryland in 1879. When Illinois did so in 1992, the 27th (and most recent) amendment was added to the Constitution. Watson, now an aide to Rep. Bill Callegari, R-Houston, is known as the “Father of the 27th Amendment.”

Watson told me he’s particularly concerned about Texas’ 1899, and still pending, handwritten legislation calling for “a convention for proposing amendments.” That’s as specific as it gets.

“It’s totally wide open,” Watson said, “so wide open you could drive a truck through it.” State Rep. Gary Elkins, R-Houston, has legislation that would wipe out only the 1899 measure. Elkins’ HJR 101 has cleared committee and probably has a better chance of passing than does Estes’ broader measure.

FYI, in 2011 there were a handful of Texas legislative calls for constitutional conventions. Looks like there is only one this year: Fort Worth Rep. Lon Burnam’s call for one to “address concerns” raised by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring restrictions on political expenditures by corporations, associations and labor unions.

Little chance, I’d think, that someday we’ll be calling Burnam the “Father of the 28th Amendment.”

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/local/herman-nevermind-about-amending-the-constitution-s/nXfQ2/

[LANTIRN]

Probably not a bad idea. He has a point in that our representatives can't even adhere to the one we have now and would abuse the shit out of a convention.

[Forever_frost]

I think it'd be great. Most people that would be appointed to go would be from states that lean right and there'd be very few things that would get the number of votes required though it'd be completely constitutional to do an amendment that starts as:

Amendment: The constitution shall be amended to replace paragraph one, word one to


The history of all hitherto existing society [2] is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master [3] and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop.

Meantime, the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturers no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, MODERN INDUSTRY; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.