WARNING-- Con-Con incident at the 7/3/09 Tea Party!! PLEASE TAKE NOTE!!

As we had been warned, three members of the John Birch Society were approached at today's Tea Party with a requester asking us to sign a petition calling for a Constitutional Convention (Con-Con). Myself and two others quickly and decisively explained to the young lady that a Con-Con would be a bigger threat to our freedom than the Obama administration (if you can imagine). Since a Con-Con lacks limitations and constraints there is no assurance that the results would have even a close resemblance to our inspired Constitution. More likely, we would see a loss of the Constitution our Founding Fathers gave their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to. Trying to re-invent the Constitution is not the answer. Getting enough citizens active in demanding our representatives adhere to the one we've been given is.

Please forward this email to your members showing the hazards of a Con-Con (the below article explains it in more detail). And if they signed that petition, ask them to demand that their names be removed.

Defending the Constitution,

Floyd Fitzgibbons
Las Vegas Chapter Leader

SEE ARTICLE BELOW OR CLICK TO VIEW....
http://helpfixamericac.wo...
Dangers of a Constitutional Convention

Written by Larry Greenley
Tuesday, 23 June 2009 06:00

The current economic crisis has served as a wakeup call to many Americans that there is a major problem with the policies emanating from Washington, both from the Federal Reserve as well as from the federal government.

This problem is not new, of course, but many Americans are becoming much more concerned about the effects that distant policymakers, politicians, and bankers are having on their lives and livelihoods, and they are becoming involved in political action for the first time.Perhaps the most visible manifestation of this great awakening to date would be the nationwide “Tea Party” events of April 15, when a million Americans rallied against big government and (in many cases) against the Fed, many of them for the first time.

But what, specifically, should be done to restore good government? Also, what strategy should be employed to get it done? Can Congress be persuaded to pass legislation restoring good government? Should Congress be encouraged to submit one or more constitutional amendments to the states for ratification? And if Congress does not appear willing to do what needs to be done, should the country hold its first constitutional convention (con-con) since the convention of 1787 that drafted the Constitution?

To those not familiar with the con-con movement, the latter question may sound fantastic. Yet 32 state legislatures (just two short of what was needed) called for a con-con to draft a balanced budget amendment during the 1970s and early ’80s.

And now, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett and Tea Party leader Michael Patrick Leahy are calling for a constitutional convention. They claim that a con-con is needed to get the federal government back under control. Yet if such a convention would be called, there would be no way of controlling what it might or might not do — from proposing the specific amendments sought by Barnett to drafting an entirely new constitution.

What’s Wrong With a Con-Con

Although attempting to get the federal government back under control by amending the Constitution is very appealing to many conservatives and constitutionalists, it does not address the primary problem. The primary problem is that the three branches of the federal government do not adhere to the Constitution as originally intended by the Founders. Surprisingly, this indifference to the Constitution began with some of the decisions of Chief Justice John Marshall nearly 200 years ago. Over the years this indifference has grown slowly, but with the advent of the Obama presidential administration combined with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, we’re now witnessing almost daily naked displays of raw, unconstitutional usurpations of power by the federal government with regard to states, businesses, and individuals.

In this environment, simply amending the Constitution would not be sufficient to get the government back under control. However, there are numerous individuals and groups that still advocate constitutional amendments as the solution.

To understand the downsides of a con-con more fully, we need to take a closer look at Article V of the Constitution, which states:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress.

According to Article V there are only two ways that amendments can be proposed to the Constitution: (1) by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress; or (2) on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, Congress shall call a convention for proposing Amendments (commonly referred to as a “constitutional convention” or “con-con”). The second method has never been used. After amendments are proposed by either method, they then must be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, or by three-fourths of special state conventions. According to Article V, Congress decides which ratification process will be used.

Although the con-con issue has rarely made it onto the radar of the national news over the years, a historic high-water mark for the con-con movement was reached in 1983, when Missouri became the 32nd state (out of the required 34) to call for a balanced budget constitutional convention (see the map in Figure 1). At about this time, members and allies of the John Birch Society began educating state legislators in the remaining 18 states about the dangers of a con-con.

+Since 1983, several other state legislatures have considered calling for a balanced budget con-con, and all of them have decided that convening a constitutional convention is a bad idea. Next, members and allies of the John Birch Society began working with state legislators in the states that already had one or more con-con calls on record to convince them to rescind (withdraw) all of their previous con-con calls. So far 11 states have voted to rescind all of their previous calls (see Figure 2). The most recent example is Oklahoma. On May 12, Governor Brad Henry signed SJR 11, “A Joint Resolution rescinding applications by the Legislature to the United States Congress to call a constitutional convention.” This followed passage of SJR 11 by the nearly unanimous votes of 41-2 in the Senate and 90-6 in the House.

In a nutshell, the argument against calling for a constitutional convention is that once convened, such a convention would be free to consider and propose whatever amendments to the Constitution that it deemed beneficial. Which is to say that such a convention could become a “runaway convention” in much the same way that the Constitutional Convention that produced our current U.S. Constitution was a runaway convention that disregarded the guidelines under which it was convened. While most Americans are very thankful for the Constitution produced by our original Constitutional Convention in 1787, most Americans and certainly most state legislators, when fully informed of the downsides involved, oppose the convening of a new constitutional convention in our day. (For a video presentation of the arguments against a con-con, see the 36-minute “Beware of Article V” video on YouTube.com or BirchTube on JBS.org.)

Warren Burger, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, argued along the same lines when he vigorously opposed convening a constitutional convention in a letter he wrote to Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum on June 22, 1988:

I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey. After a Convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the Convention if we don’t like its agenda. The meeting in 1787 ignored the limit placed by the Confederation Congress “for the sole and express purpose.”

While it would be perfectly constitutional to convene an Article V constitutional convention, it would not be prudent. Given the present-day general lack of knowledge of both the Constitution and the original intent of our Founders, along with the inordinate influence over our political processes by very biased elites, the chances that a modern-day constitutional convention and subsequent ratification process could change our Constitution for the worse are too great to risk calling for such a convention.

We even have a warning directly from James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” concerning the inadvisability of calling for a constitutional convention. When the states of New York and Virginia formally petitioned Congress in 1788 to call a constitutional convention to propose amendments to the Constitution, which had only been completed the year before, Madison wrote a letter in which he emphatically warned against convening such a convention:

If a General Convention were to take place for the avowed and sole purpose of revising the Constitution, it would naturally consider itself as having a greater latitude than the Congress…. It would consequently give greater agitation to the public mind; an election into it would be courted by the most violent partisans on both sides … [and] would no doubt contain individuals of insidious views, who, under the mask of seeking alterations popular in some parts … might have the dangerous opportunity of sapping the very foundations of the fabric…. Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention, which assembled under every propitious circumstance, I should tremble for the result of a second, meeting in the present temper in America. [From a letter by James Madison to G.L. Turberville, November 2, 1788.]

Two hundred twenty years later, James Madison’s arguments against the calling of an Article V constitutional convention are still very convincing. Even though he had been directly involved in crafting the Constitution the previous year, he specifically advised against exercising the provision in Article V for calling a new constitutional convention because “individuals of insidious views” could use the pretense of pursuing popular amendments to mask their real intentions of radically revising the Constitution.

click to continue reading
http://helpfixamericac.wo...