CONSTITUTION - Uncategorized - Independence Institute

Principles for Drafting A Balanced Budget Amendment 0
- December 1, 2014
This article originally appeared at The American Thinker. The Article V Handbook, which I authored for the American Legislative Exchange Council, emphasizes that citizens pressing for constitutional amendments should avoid fringe or unpopular proposals. The Handbook distills four guiding principles for selecting amendments worthy of support: (1) An amendment should move America back toward Founding
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More Evidence An Article V Convention is a “Convention of the States”0
- November 20, 2014
Earlier this year, I documented one of the reasons we know an Article V convention is a “convention of the states” rather than a mass popular gathering: Founding Era documents tell us so. I listed several such documents. (Subsequent to the Founding, in the case of Smith v. Union Bank, the Supreme Court also referred
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Embracing Foreign Languages 0
- October 31, 2014
Republican Congressman Mike Coffman and his Democratic opponent Andrew Romanoff held a public debate yesterday—all in Spanish. It was billed as the first non-English candidate debate in Colorado state history. Well, maybe not. Hispanics settled Colorado long before Anglos did. When I was practicing law in Denver in the 1970s and 1980s (before embarking on
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The Washington Post Picks Up the Flag from the Convention Alarmists 0
- October 27, 2014
The past week saw yet another assault on those reformers who seek to cure federal dysfunction by promoting a “Convention for proposing Amendments.” The latest attack took the form of an opinion column that in content offered nothing new. It featured many of the usual errors of commission and omission: The author confused a “Convention
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Colorado Goes to the Supreme Court to Defend TABOR 0
- October 24, 2014
Three years ago, a group of primarily government plaintiffs sued in federal district court to void Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR). TABOR allows the people, not just the legislature, to vote on most tax increases, most debt increases, and some spending hikes. The plaintiffs argued that the 20-year old state constitutional provision violated the
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More Evidence From Last Term That It’s Not a “Conservative Supreme Court”0
- October 20, 2014
Note: This article was first published at cns news. There is a common media myth that the current U.S. Supreme Court, or at least a majority of the current justices, is “conservative.” But if a “conservative” justice is one who consistently interprets the Constitution in accordance with traditional methods of judging—as the Founders intended for
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