Please see Article V of the US Constitution.

PS. I'm by no means a fan of Inez or Lindsey but choosing between the lesser of two evils...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Article V would be the Article describing the process required to amend the Constitution. What are you trying to say?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

That even if such an amendment were to pass, the states could then enact another amendment to repeal the first. (18-21)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Regardless of the amendment passing... do we want to vote for representatives who do not truly represent our views? I'll vote for Kerry just to get Bush out of office, but only because a 3rd party has no chance in hell of ousting him. Concerning state and local representation... voting for someone who hold views that are diametrically opposed to your own is giving them a stamp of approval. Kerry isn't my favorite candidate for Pres, but I don't hate him and everything he stands for. A candidate who states that they are opposed to equal rights for anyone, is my polar opposite, and I don't want them "representing" me. I wouldn't vote this year either Jim. Shit... I gotta get registered in WA tomorrow or I'm not voting at all.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

That was disjointed and hard to follow. I'm tired. Going to bed now.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

To be precise, it's not the states that repeal Constitutional amendments - the states themselves are stuck with anything in the Constitution. It's the Federal representatives elected by the states that have a chance to repeal an amendment.

And in case you missed out on this, the entire reason the Shrub wants to get this stuck in the Constitution instead of simply dumping such a law where it would belong - IE, the US Code - is to make it more difficult to overturn. A law in the US Code, which is where federal laws are actually SUPPOSED to go (the Constitution is a framework intended to broadly define the role and scope of federal government and protect critical civil liberties, NOT a repository of criminal statutes) could be overturned by the courts OR by the legislative system with a simple majority, whereas repealing a Constitutional amendment could ONLY be done by the legislature, and would need to be done with a two thirds majority, not a simple majority.

Dubya knows damn well that even if he could get his anti-homosexual legislation passed, it would get struck down FAST in any other administration - so he's attempting to get something done that would be a lot harder for a less diehard christian-conservative administration to undo. Even though it's at the expense of violating the intended purpose and integrity of the Constitution itself.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

> whereas repealing a Constitutional amendment could ONLY be done by
> the legislature, and would need to be done with a two thirds
> majority, not a simple majority.

actually to repeal an amendment also requires endorsement by 2/3 of the states in addition to the whole congressional bit, since you have to pass ANOTHER amendment to make it happen. it's hard to repeal an amendment once it's there. the only time it happened so far was when they tried to take our booze away from us (18th & 21st Ams.). so yeah, it's pretty hard (though not impossible) to repeal an amendment. it gets harder when you're dealing with one that singles out a rather small minority of citizens, even if they are a fabulous one.

the main reason they want to do this with an amendment rather than just a law, though, is that the law -- which already exists, in the form of the defense of marriage act (thank you bill clinton) -- is widely thought to be unconstitutional. in other words, what they're trying to do is far enough outside the framework of the current constitution that it's likely that only a fundamental change to the document will suffice. this is just not something that anybody ever imagined would be a federal -- or even national -- issue. and the principled argument against the FMA is simply "it's not."

none of which does anything to vitiate your point that this whole affair threatens to undermine some of the main reasons we HAVE a constitution (i.e., protect us from each other and our government). i will point out that dubya doesn't NEED to get any anti-homosexual legislation passed, and indeed there isn't any pending. it's already on the books! and now that massachussetts has started marrying gay people, a constitutional challenge to the DOMA is not far off. hell, it's probably been filed already now that there are couples with standing! i'll check.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Does she have a choice, though? I mean, most South Carolinians swing that way, too. If she's gonna get those voters who go for a recognizable name, she's gotta make sure not to piss/scare them off. ... Eh, I'll still vote for her.

Who's your candidate?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Don't have one this year. I'm not going to vote for another Republican, but I'm sure as shit not going to lend my support to, of all things, a Superintendent of Education who supports amending the Constitution specifically for the purpose of making gays' lives miserable.

I don't ascribe to your "but she has to" bit, either. She could very easily have made a press release saying that she had a moral objection to homosexuality but could not condone translating that objection into amending the Constitution for a purpose that it was never intended to serve. I wouldn't be THRILLED about an openly anti-gay candidate, but I could at least accept one who didn't translate his or her bias into such sweeping abuse. Several current Democratic and Republican senators did precisely that when it came time to vote on the FMA itself.

To recap a bit from an earlier comment: whether you approve of homosexual marriage or not, the Constitution is not a catch-all repository of federal statutes. There's nothing in the Constitution prohibiting murder, arson, rape, or child prostitution - why? Because that's not what the Constitution is for. Statute law goes in the US Code. The Constitution is a document that is intended to define the scope of Federal government and to safeguard civil liberties - it is NOT a dumping ground for any random statute law prohibiting individual action or actions.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Whilst I agree with you that the Constitution was NEVER intended to be a statute of laws, a la the US Code, the fact remains that if an amendment were passed, it could still be removed. Granted, the only way to do that would be ANOTHER amendment, but it could still be removed... in a difficult manner. As far as the process goes, it IS, in fact, the states who pass amendments. The House and Senate may propse amendments by getting a 2/3 vote in each house. If the same version of the amendments does pass by a 2/3 vote in each house, it then is sent to the legislatures of all 50 states, at which time 3/4 of all the states must ratify it for it to become law. The "Founding Fathers" were men of intelligence. They made it DAMN HARD to change the document they created but not impossible.


PS Always vote. I have not served my country in any way except to pay my taxes (as required by various laws including the 16th Amendment), but even I know that voting is one of the most important rights we have.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

1. will somebody PLEASE show me where I stated that it's *impossible* to remove an amendment? please? cause I'm pretty sure I never did.

2. No. I will not vote in this (senatorial) election. I refuse to support Tenenbaum, but I have no desire to support the Republican candidate either. It's like this: her transgression (in my eyes) is severe enough to be worth punishing her party by not giving it a vote they would otherwise have received, but not severe enough to warrant actively giving that vote to the republicans - thereby for that matter encouraging their own policies, which I SURE as hell don't want to do. The actual "correct" response to such a situation is to run for office yourself and/or promote your own third party candidate, but I frankly haven't the time or the funding, much less any reasonable expectation of actually succeeding in winning an election. In the meantime, my vote gets withheld from the local election but not in the Presidential election coming up.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Are there any good third-party candidates running? Not that that matters a whole lot, of course, and not that I voted in any local elections since coming of age (not even when Mass. elected its Republican governor!).

And the incumbent reelection rate for the Senate is near 90% most of the time. Oh, thinking about politics makes me feel cynical...

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

so have you written to her office and to the democratic party letting them know all this? I think a quick "I would have voted for you except you're a jackass vote-whore" and a printout of this thread would be sufficient. It's hard not to be cynical of government.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)