A loud minority of Texans call for Independence, which is not really possible as far as I know, BUT could the Rest of the USA just kick another state (Not necessary Texas) out? Or is this also not possible?
A loud minority of Texans call for Independence, which is not really possible as far as I know, BUT could the Rest of the USA just kick another state (Not necessary Texas) out? Or is this also not possible?
Sure, but once there is enough determination to deprive a state of equal representation in the Senate that there are sufficient votes to amend the Constitution once in order to do this–which, as you have pointed out, is a very high bar–then it is no harder to go through the amendment process twice in order to first drop that sentence.
Indeed, the limitation in what can be amended is in practice totally powerless. I think of it as a rhetorical flourish to emphasize the importance they placed on representing states rather than people. For what it’s worth, I advocate for the full abolition of the Senate. It’s an anti-democratic institution. There’s no way to fix it without making it a clone of the House so let’s just do away with it entirely.
It isn’t worded as a “rhetorical flourish”; it is worded incredibly clearly and explicitly as a prohibition:
In fact, taking your reasoning a step further: are you likewise arguing that when the prohibition against banning the slave trade prior to 1808 was included here, that it was also understood to be a “rhetorical flourish” with no teeth behind it? If so, then why did they go to so much trouble to put it in? It seems like a lot of wasted effort in that case.
And yet it’s inherently non-operative. I’m unconcerned with how it was intended since that’s totally irrelevant to what it actually is.
If, as you say,
Then why did you waste time describing what you believed was the intention behind it earlier when you said,
Regardless, the other point that I made that you haven’t addressed still stands: they put that prohibition against banning the slave trade in there for a reason, and that reason was presumably not “as a rhetorical flourish”, so either the people who insisted that it be present were horribly incompetent at writing legal language that would preserve their own interests, or your personal opinion as to how Constitutional law works in this case is missing something important.
I never said that was the intention. I said that’s what I think of it as. In practice all it does is underline a point. These same people also totally screwed up how we chose the president and vice president and failed to provide a proper mechanism for replacing a dead president.
Horribly incompetent? No. Flawless, or even particularly prescient? No. They got a lot of big stuff right; they got a whole lot wrong.
So just to be clear: you think that this particular language was badly written because it is so easily bypassed?