"Libertarian" wingnut radio host Neal Boortz, a constitutional genius in his own mind, has proposed a solution to Government By The Masses Run Amok. Unfortunately for Neal, he apparently hasn't read the document in question.
If you occasionally follow the rantings of self-styled libertarian radio yakker Neal Boortz, you know that his current theme is the imminent takeover of our democracy... er, Republic by the foolish and uneducated receiving their indoctrination in "government schools." Boortz' primary supporting evidence, is of course, the failure of those voters to cast their ballots per his approval. Now the Republic is in grave danger from freeloaders like single women voting for Obama and waiting for the gravy train of government "handouts" to roll in. Boortz has a major issue with federal spending on anybody except the well-heeled.
It's hard to believe these are the people who spent the campaign calling Obama an elitist. Maintaining that some people (specifically, wealthy ones) have the right to participate in our electoral process while others don't is as elitist as they come. So what is Mr. Boortz' solution to Government of, by, and for The Great Unwashed?
We need a Constitutional Convention. More specifically, we need a Constitutional Convention called for the sole purpose of adding three specific amendments to the United States Constitution. The convention would consider these three amendments ... and nothing further. Two-thirds of the States need to pass a resolution calling for such a convention, and those resolutions need to be specifically worded so as to limit the purpose of the convention to these three amendments. Without that limitation we're going to have left-wing fools trying to add amendments guarantying [sic] such things as a right to a job, a place to live and health care. Not good.
Boortz' wish list consists of
- Repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment establishing the income tax
- Repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment providing for direct popular election of Senators
- Limiting Representatives to three terms
The first, of course, has been a pipe dream of the nutso right for decades. Boortz is particularly obsessed with returning to the grand old days when legislators would send their best buddies to Washington:
Before the 17th Amendment each state legislature would appoint that state's two Senators. The congressmen were in Washington to represent the people, and the Senators were there to represent the states. Right now the government of Mexico has an official representative in Washington; the government of New Mexico does not. This enables the federal government to run roughshod over the states with unfounded mandates and other federal demands. Give the state governments a voice in Washington .. repeal the 17th Amendment.
Boortz finds the authority for such a convention in Article V of the Constitution, quoted here in its entirety:
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; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.
As long as that single sentence is, it reveals one small problem with Boortz' self-proclaimed stroke of genius. Article V gives states no authority to limit the scope of amendments proposed by a convention. It only says that two-thirds of the states can call a convention which would propose amendments for submission to the states for ratification. Once a convention is called, it can propose any amendments it pleases. This mechanism has never been used for precisely that reason. A convention supposedly limited to revisions to the Articles of Confederation ultimately led to its scrapping in favor of our current constitution, after all.
I've often thought that conservatives' arguments for "strict construction" of the Constitution get conveniently ignored when the Constitution conflicts with their political agenda; here's another example. Boortz is fond of issuing "reading assignments" on his site; this time he didn't do his homework.