So Where is That Article V Convention?

 

 So Where is That Article V Convention?

 

Seven years ago, in 2013, Mark Levin published a book titled The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic.  In this book, Levin proposed that our Republic could be saved by calling an Article V Convention of the States to amend the US Constitution with 11 amendments which Levin proposed in the book.

 A movement began to call an Article V Convention, and an effort was made to get State Legislatures to pass measures calling for such a Convention.  

 Then in 2016 Texas Governor Gregg Abbott published a 92 page document he called "The Texas Plan" which echoed Levin's idea, this time with nine proposed amendments.

There was a great deal of fanfare and debate.  Conservative opponents of the idea, expressed concern that such a convention might result in a convention that scrapped our US Constitution entirely, or which became hijacked by liberals.  

I initially supported Levin's idea, but upon later research, found that Levin had misinterpreted or misrepresented George Mason in relation to the purpose of the Article V convention.  (See my 2016 blog George Mason and Article V: The Untold Story)

Back in 2015 I wrote a blog titled "How Texas Can Regain our Sovereignty" which proposed a Texas Sovereignty Act Bill.  This Act would be a Tenth Amendment enforcement Act.  The idea gathered steam fast, and in a follow up blog, I called for such a bill. 

In February 2017  Texas State Representative Cecil Bell Jr. filed the Texas Sovereignty Act, Texas House Bill 2338, A companion bill was filed in the Texas Senate.  The Bill passed the House committee in the House, but died in calendars.  

We had a lot of support for the Texas Sovereignty Act, but we had some opposition from some pro-Article V advocates.  For some reason, they believed that the Texas Sovereignty Act concept somehow subtracted from their efforts.  Their argument was that we should call for an Article V Convention instead.  We argued that the two were not mutually exclusive, and some key people saw this, and stood for both.  

One argument we presented at the time, is that the Texas Sovereignty Act would have given Texas immediate relief from Federal overreach, whereas an Article V Convention would take years to gather enough state's calling for it, and then the results of the convention itself, were in question.  When would a convention actually occur?  Perhaps never.

Sadly the certainty of the immediate relief of a Texas Sovereignty Act was sacrificed in 2017 in favor af the maybe someday relief of a call for an Article V Convention, with the Texas Legislature passed instead.

 So here we are folks,  That was over three years ago, and no Article V convention is in sight.  In fact, since 2017, I have not even heard any talk about an effort to call an Article V Convention.

 In fact, it has been seven years since Levin made his proposal, and still, nothing has been done to protect Texas from Federal over reach.  And we could have passed the Texas Sovereignty Act back in 2017!