Pitch made for Convention of the States (T bag...propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/sarpy/bellevue/pitch-made-for-convention-of-the-states/article_dd601c66-b0b5-5cc4-ac91-f057b7aa0a61.html

POSTED: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2015 1:00 AM
By Eugene Curtin / Leader Associate Editor

Laura Ebke can perhaps relate to those small bands of colonial Americans who first began muttering about royal oppression while downing mugs of ale and composing rousing pamphlets.

Ebke, the state senator from Crete, hosted a small gathering Nov. 3 at Bellevue University’s Military Veteran Service Center where she promoted a national effort to call a Convention of the States in order to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

About 10 people attended the presentation, where Ebke said the convention would discuss imposing fiscal restraints on the federal government, limiting its power and jurisdiction and imposing term limits for members of Congress.

While such a convention has never been called, the process for doing so is enshrined in Article 5 of the Constitution, which enables the states to bypass Congress and propose constitutional amendments of their own.

FULL story at link. So far, four states have signed on. They are Georgia, Florida, Alaska and Alabama.

[longship]

1. This happens at our collective peril.

The majority of states are run by GOP legislatures and governors.

A ConCon could easily be a nightmare.

[suston96]

2. Think about it.....

The last "constitutional" convention was assembled to "fix" the Articles of Confederation.

We know what happened back then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation

On January 21, 1786, the Virginia Legislature, following James Madison's recommendation, invited all the states to send delegates to Annapolis, Maryland to discuss ways to reduce interstate conflict. At what came to be known as the Annapolis Convention, the few state delegates in attendance endorsed a motion that called for all states to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787 to discuss ways to improve the Articles of Confederation in a "Grand Convention." Although the states' representatives to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were only authorized to amend the Articles, the representatives held secret, closed-door sessions and wrote a new constitution. The new Constitution gave much more power to the central government, but characterization of the result is disputed. The general goal of the authors was to get close to a republic as defined by the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, while trying to address the many difficulties of the interstate relationships. Historian Forrest McDonald, using the ideas of James Madison from Federalist 39, describes the change this way:

Continued at link.