Let's Try

I lost sleep last night worrying about the potential assassination of Democratic Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, because of Trump's malevolent words of madness urging his Second Amendment supporters to take matters into their own hands if they do not get elected whom they want. Even if one does not love Hillary Clinton one should worry about what the Cretan of cacophonic discourse said. Nothing short of the demise of our Republic is at stake.

Trump cannot defend what he said. What he said matters not because anything he says is brilliant but because his supporters often are not and take his words seriously. Not only are those who support him not brilliant they are prone to violence as well. Two brutes in Boston beat up a homeless man at the beginning of Trump's campaign. They thought Trump was advocating they do so. Trump could not care less about the immorality of what he says because the only virtuous empathetic morality Trump has is to himself.

Avoiding Second Amendment remedies in the form of violence to change a political process was SUPPOSED to make us different in the future from the Europe our Founders knew in their past. Maybe we are not so different after all. Maybe violence is in our DNA and cannot be changed. I hope that is not the case. I rather love this nation warts and all. Everyone else whose ancestors braved a dangerous journey to get to Lady Liberty's shores should as well.

Benjamin Franklin, as he emerged from the Constitutional convention in 1787, was asked : "Doctor, what do you have, a Republic or a Monarchy? Franklin replied "A Republic IF you can keep it." Let's try.

Amending the Constition is Hard

Hillary Clinton could NOT amend the Constitution but those who support Trumpet are either ignorant of basic civics or stupid or both! 

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/

The authority to amend the Constitution of the United States is derived from Article V of the Constitution. After Congress proposes an amendment, the Archivist of the United States, who heads the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is charged with responsibility for administering the ratification process under the provisions of 1 U.S.C. 106b. The Archivist has delegated many of the ministerial duties associated with this function to the Director of the Federal Register. Neither Article V of the Constitution nor section 106b describe the ratification process in detail. The Archivist and the Director of the Federal Register follow procedures and customs established by the Secretary of State, who performed these duties until 1950, and the Administrator of General Services, who served in this capacity until NARA assumed responsibility as an independent agency in 1985.

The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. None of the 27 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed by constitutional convention. The Congress proposes an amendment in the form of a joint resolution. Since the President does not have a constitutional role in the amendment process, the joint resolution does not go to the White House for signature or approval. The original document is forwarded directly to NARA's Office of the Federal Register (OFR) for processing and publication. The OFR adds legislative history notes to the joint resolution and publishes it in slip law format. The OFR also assembles an information package for the States which includes formal "red-line" copies of the joint resolution, copies of the joint resolution in slip law format, and the statutory procedure for ratification under 1 U.S.C. 106b.

The Archivist submits the proposed amendment to the States for their consideration by sending a letter of notification to each Governor along with the informational material prepared by the OFR. The Governors then formally submit the amendment to their State legislatures or the state calls for a convention, depending on what Congress has specified. In the past, some State legislatures have not waited to receive official notice before taking action on a proposed amendment. When a State ratifies a proposed amendment, it sends the Archivist an original or certified copy of the State action, which is immediately conveyed to the Director of the Federal Register. The OFR examines ratification documents for facial legal sufficiency and an authenticating signature. If the documents are found to be in good order, the Director acknowledges receipt and maintains custody of them. The OFR retains these documents until an amendment is adopted or fails, and then transfers the records to the National Archives for preservation.

A proposed amendment becomes part of the Constitution as soon as it is ratified by three-fourths of the States (38 of 50 States). When the OFR verifies that it has received the required number of authenticated ratification documents, it drafts a formal proclamation for the Archivist to certify that the amendment is valid and has become part of the Constitution. This certification is published in the Federal Register and U.S. Statutes at Large and serves as official notice to the Congress and to the Nation that the amendment process has been completed.

In a few instances, States have sent official documents to NARA to record the rejection of an amendment or the rescission of a prior ratification. The Archivist does not make any substantive determinations as to the validity of State ratification actions, but it has been established that the Archivist's certification of the facial legal sufficiency of ratification documents is final and conclusive.

In recent history, the signing of the certification has become a ceremonial function attended by various dignitaries, which may include the President. President Johnson signed the certifications for the 24th and 25th Amendments as a witness, and President Nixon similarly witnessed the certification of the 26th Amendment along with three young scholars. On May 18, 1992, the Archivist performed the duties of the certifying official for the first time to recognize the ratification of the 27th Amendment, and the Director of the Federal Register signed the certification as a witness.

The Clinton Imperative -- Wonderful editorial -- [The Messenger of Madness]

Trump's Second Amendment Remedy that is the assassination of Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton and/or the judges she appoints, chilled me to the bone so much so I could not fall asleep. This beast Trump is the worst candidate Republican, Democrat or anyone else that we have had the misfortune to witness on the American electoral scene. It should give pause to all who consider themselves civilized to reject Trump, this messenger of malice and madness.


The Clinton Imperative By Charles Fried -- The Boston Globe

Increasing numbers of registered Republicans, and former and present Republican officials like myself, will not support Donald Trump for president. That’s the easy part.

He has shown us that he is a mean and vindictive bully, striking out in the crudest ways (e.g., his sexist ripostes against Carly Fiorina and Megan Kelly) against anyone who attacks him, and then extending his vile remarks even to their relatives (Heidi and Rafael Cruz, Ghazala Khan). Indeed it is hard to think of any person in recent public life who has displayed a more repellent personality. Richard Nixon might come to mind, but that only because of what showed up in the secret recordings of what he thought were private conversations in the Oval Office. In public, Nixon had the self-control and self-awareness to keep his worst qualities reasonably well hidden. Rochefoucauld said that hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, and in this respect at least, Trump is no hypocrite. Add to that the unabashed racism, the divisive and hate-filled quality of some of his proposed domestic policies, his disregard for the reputation, even the credit of the United States in his proposals for dealing with our treaty obligations and debts to other nations and foreign creditors, and his professed admiration for the sly and murderous Vladimir Putin — all these are reason enough for anyone, of whatever party, to refuse to support such a person.

As I say, to keep one’s distance from this malignant buffoon is the easy part. Now for the hard part.

Recent statements — and they did not just casually slip out — make clear why any person of conscience must actively work to assure that Donald Trump is not our next president. For just the other day he has added a thinly veiled threat of, indeed invitation to, violence and civic disruption if he loses in November. He has said that if he loses this would be the result of a “rigged” election, riddled with fraud, people voting “ten times” over — fraud which in court proceeding after proceeding has been found to be a pure bogeyman, a fiction used to justify transparent racially, ethnically, and politically motivated maneuvers to deny the ballot to whole classes of persons. Even in 1960, when the election may well have been stolen by shenanigans in Texas and Chicago, the loser did not cross the line to invite lawlessness. And this is not the first time Trump has made this threat. He had said much the same would be the result if he were denied the Republican nomination in a “rigged” convention.

Think of it. This is the man who would have in his charge the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the CIA. He would be commander in chief of the armed forces. And imagine if shortly after his inauguration there were, as there well might be, a serious terrorist outrage on our homeland. How would he react? Would that not be Trump’s Reichstag fire, justifying sweeping arrests, violations of civil liberties, suppression of the media? Are Trump’s reflexes more restrained, more respectful of democracy than those of Recep Tayyip Erdogan? I would not count on it.

Respect for our country, its Constitution, its history and traditions, just a sense of common decency, require that we not allow this man to be elected president of the United States. To invoke party loyalty, to dwell on one’s reservations about Hillary Clinton, to contemplate not voting at all, or the silly and self-defeating gesture of voting for the Libertarian or Green Party candidate, would be a frivolous failure of the most urgent present duty of patriotism. I support and shall vote for Hillary Clinton. Any other course risks complicity in a national catastrophe.