In this era of ever expanding government, socialized health care, bailouts of the auto industry and banking, and energy giveaways to international competitors, a pretty reasoned argument can be made that the original intent of our Constitutional framers is no longer being met.
When the Articles of Confederation no longer became a viable option for our fledgling federal government, a convention was called amongst the states to draft a new document that would further centralize power with the national government (the Articles were having a difficult time regulating interstate commerce, levying taxes, and raising and maintaining an armed service to mitigate insurrections and provide for the common defense). After much deliberation, debate, and discussion, ultimately, our U.S. Constitution was created and ratified.
Fast forward to today.
Bearing Drift has learned that Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, William Howell, has been working with former U.S. Attorney General and member of the Iraq Study Group, Ed Messe, to explore the possibility of holding another constitutional convention – this time to explicitly enumerate what rights states might have to check currently unchecked federal power.
Bearing Drift has a query into the Speaker that, to this point, remains unanswered as to how far he actually wants to take this and whether or not this is a serious proposal or merely an idea.
Article V of the Constitution lays out the requirements for the states to call for amending the document vice the generally practiced method of Congress proposing the amendments to be later ratified by the states. According to the Constitution, the legislatures of two-thirds of the States must call for a convention, with three-quarters of the state legislatures or conventions then ratifying the changes (which is also the norm for congressional amendments).
Originally, James Madison of Virginia proposed the Bill of Rights (the Constitution’s first ten amendments), but did so via the Congress. It was Virginia that was the tenth state to ratify the amendments, bringing the number over three-quarters, in 1791.
The amendments were brought by anti-Federalists who felt that the Constitution as written did not provide enough protections from unfettered national power. They were modeled after George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights drafted in 1776.
One of the amendments provided is the 10th which says:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
It is not unprecedented for the Constitution to be amended, nor did the framers think it would remain unchanged.
“The older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others,” said Benjamin Franklin, one of the framers.
Clearly he saw that there would be times when the document might have to be refined.
Is this one of those times? Are the states ready to take the lead at making any changes? And, is Speaker Howell ready to lead that charge?
