Quote:
Originally posted by The Missing Link:
How about we repeal the 21st Amendment?
*waits* |
I'd rather repeal that than the 2nd or 10th, but if I was going to repeal an amendment, I'd go with either the 16th or 17th.
The 14th is also 'bad,' not because of the amendment itself, but because of a faulty interpretation of it that has lived on for quite some time, despite not having appeared in any authoritative judicial text prior to 20 years after its passage.
That, and the very history of the amendment's "ratification" is plauged with scandal.
The Republicans couldn't even get the 2/3 majority required to pass the amendment, except by refusing to seat southern senators and representatives.
When it did pass, the amendment failed to secure the necessary three-fourths of the states. Constitutionally, the proposed amendment would have been dead.
That was not to be. The Republican Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867 which placed the entire south under military rule and required that southern states ratify the amendment just be considered 'part' of the union again (in spite of their earlier claim that the union indiolvable).
The south eventually voted to ratify the amendment, after which two northern states—Ohio and New Jersey—withdrew their support over disgust with what they saw as Republican tyranny. The Republicans just ignored this and declared the amendment valid.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Act_of_1867