On Monday, the Pennsylvania Senate State Government Committee approved a resolution calling for a “Convention of States” to amend the U.S. Constitution to check congressional power and federal spending.
Senators Cris Dush (R-Wellsboro) and Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-York) authored the measure, which all of the committee’s seven Republicans voted to support and all of the panel’s four Democrats opposed.
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In Section 1 of its 14th Amendment, the U.S. Constitution reads in pertinent part: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Proposed by Congress in 1866 — and deemed by a procedurally-rare subsequent vote of Congress to have been validly ratified by the sufficient number of state legislatures in 1868 — the 14th Amendment is among the Constitution’s lengthiest and it touches upon a number of different topics each of which could stand alone. Authorship of the above-quoted words has been attributed to United States Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan. This particular provision of the 14th Amendment is generally acknowledged to overturn the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the now-infamous 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in which it had been determined that African-Americans born in the United States — to parents likewise born within the United States — could not be deemed to be American citizens. Often overlooked by persons professing to be in-the-know about the 14th Amendment, and what it does — or does not — convey about birth citizenship are the key words…
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Back in 1971, the Tennessee General Assembly quickly ratified the 26th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which lowered the voting age in all elections–federal, state and local– to 18 in every state. By doing so, they voluntarily give up a section of the Tennessee State Constitution. Here’s that story: During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Vietnam War — with which the United States was heavily involved — continued to rage overseas. With so many American soldiers — several of them younger than 20 years of age — dying on the battlefields of a foreign land in this War, public opinion within the United States began to shift in terms of by what age a person should become eligible to vote. At the time, an individual had to be at least 21 years of age in order to register to vote. But with the evolution in social sentiment occasioned at least in part by the Vietnam War, Congress began to take steps to lower that age from 21 down to 18. A popular slogan of the day was “if you are old enough to fight for your country, then you are old enough to cast a…
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The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted freed former male slaves and any adult male citizen the right to vote, was ratified by the requisite three-fourths of all states and added to the Constitution in 1870. At the time there were 37 states, and when the 28th state ratified the amendment in February, 1870, the three-fourths standard was met. Tennessee was not among those 28 states. In fact, Tennessee did not get around to ratifying the 15th Amendment until more than 100 years later, in 1997. Here is that story: During the Reconstruction period in the American South, in the aftermath of the Civil War, three individual amendments were incorporated into the U.S. Constitution – each separated in succession by only a few years – pursuant to that document’s Article V. This trifecta ended a dry spell of more than 60 years of no amendments at all finding their way into the federal Constitution. The 13th Amendment, ending slavery, was adopted in 1865. The 14th Amendment, defining citizenship status, came along in 1868 (although there is some question as to whether its ratification process was 100 percent strictly by-the-book). And the 15th Amendment, granting to former male slaves –…
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Seven Republican Tennessee state lawmakers will head to Phoenix next week for the Balanced Budget Amendment Planning Convention. The purpose of convention, which starts Tuesday and is expected to last through Thursday or Friday, is to lay the groundwork for an anticipated convention convened under Article V of the U.S. Constitution to propose a balanced budget amendment. The lawmakers include Sens. Mark Green (R-Clarksville), Mike Bell (R-Riceville), Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) and Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro), and Reps. Jay Reedy (R-Erin), Sheila Butt (R-Columbia) and Dennis Powers (R-Jacksboro). The national convention of the states next week is the first held since 1861, when states met to discuss an amendment they hoped would avert a civil war. A resolution submitted to the convention by the Tennessee delegation is the first draft of rules presented for consideration, according to a news release issued by the Tennessee Senate Republicans. “The resolution filed by our delegation will serve as a guide to the discussion to get the ball rolling on rules to govern an Article V convention to balance the federal budget,” said Sen. Bell. “Our nation’s founders, Mason and Madison, insisted there be a method to amend the Constitution, fearing that at some point in…
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