{"id":2547,"date":"2018-03-04T16:41:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-05T00:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2547"},"modified":"2018-03-04T16:41:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-05T00:41:01","slug":"pro-tip-only-the-people-can-change-the-constitution-generally-with-the-help-of-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2547","title":{"rendered":"Pro Tip: Only the People can change the Constitution (generally with the help of Congress)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When a president or candidate claims to be a protector against or progenitor of changes to the Constitution, do not believe them.<\/p>\n<p>The president&#8217;s role in repealing the Second Amendment or preventing its repeal is operationally zero.\u00a0 The same is true of adding new amendments &#8211; e.g., the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Equal_Rights_Amendment\">ERA<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The process is completely contained in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/founding-docs\/constitution-transcript#toc-article-v-\">Article V<\/a>.\u00a0 The<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/TLDR\"> tl;dr<\/a> is: if two thirds of both houses propose an amendment (enough to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/founding-docs\/constitution-transcript#toc-section-7-\">override a veto<\/a>, were one even possible, incidentally) and three fourths of the state legislatures or conventions therein approve it, the proposed amendment becomes part of the Constitution.\u00a0 (There&#8217;s an alternative way to start the ball rolling, but the 3\/4 approval by states always has to happen.)<\/p>\n<p>The chief executive&#8217;s only input or output is the ability to shout from the<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bully_pulpit\"> Bully Pulpit<\/a>. That&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n<p>The judicial isn&#8217;t involved, either.\u00a0 It&#8217;s just us.<\/p>\n<p>So don&#8217;t vote based on that crap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a president or candidate claims to be a protector against or progenitor of changes to the Constitution, do not believe them. The president&#8217;s role in repealing the Second Amendment or preventing its repeal is operationally zero.\u00a0 The same is true of adding new amendments &#8211; e.g., the ERA. The process is completely contained in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2547\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}