Constitutional Amendments

[xoxoxoBruce]

This a guy sent me an email telling me he was glad the ERA amendment was killed. I emailed back...

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

He emailed back, What's that?
I emailed, That's it, the ERA amendment.
He responded, Oh, that doesn't sound bad.
This is the first case I remember of something good being fucked by a misinformation campaign.

From there it's been all downhill, that's why this story tickled my fancy.
Dude writes a college paper on Constitutional amendments and gets a C. Arguing with the teachers gets him nowhere and he's pissed.

No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

Proposed by James Madison in 1791 but failed to be ratified by enough states.
So pissed off dude starts a letter writing campaign...

If the thing was still alive, then it already had nine votes. At this point—there now being 50 states—it needed a total of 38. So he started writing letters. Lots of letters. After lots of rejections, Sen. William Cohen of Maine got interested. He passed it on, and Maine’s legislature ratified it in 1983. Gregory kept writing letters. Colorado ratified it in 1984, joined by five more states in 1985, three in each of the next three years, then seven in 1989. In 1992, it got the 38th vote. And that is why the language above is now the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Right on pissed off dude! I don't know if the internet would make it easier or more difficult but monster says, The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.