Repeal the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Introduction to the U.S. Constitution

This is the introduction to the Constitution, on the website of U.S. Senate.

Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the United States Constitution is the world’s longest surviving written charter of government.  Its first three words – “We The People” – affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens.  The supremacy of the people through their elected representatives is recognized in Article I, which creates a Congress consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives.  The positioning of Congress at the beginning of the Constitution affirms its status as the “First Branch” of the federal government.

The Constitution assigned to Congress responsibility for organizing the executive and judicial branches, raising revenue, declaring war, and making all laws necessary for executing these powers.  The president is permitted to veto specific legislative acts, but Congress has the authority to override presidential vetoes by two-thirds majorities of both houses.  The Constitution also provides that the Senate advise and consent on key executive and judicial appointments and on the approval for ratification of treaties.

For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers successfully separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments.  More a concise statement of national principles than a detailed plan of governmental operation, the Constitution has evolved to meet the changing needs of a modern society profoundly different from the eighteenth-century world in which its creators lived.  To date, the Constitution has been amended 27 times, most recently in 1992.  The first ten amendments constitute the Bill of Rights.

This is the first sentence in the third paragraph.

"For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers successfully separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments."

The oldest national constitution in the world, which has been the governing document for the world's most powerful nation, deliberately divides power so that no one man or organization can dictate how people live their lives.  The President of the United States cannot make laws by himself, although many have tried.  The Congress cannot guarantee that the laws they pass will be enacted because the President has the authority to veto any legislation that they pass.  Laws that are passed by Congress and signed by the President can still be nullified if the Supreme Court rules that way.

The first sentence in the third paragraph of the Senate's web page explicitly states three pairs of competing interests.

• "majority rule and minority rights"
• "liberty and equality"
• "the federal and state governments"

The 17th Amendment to the Constitution changed the relationship between the Federal and the State governments.  For the reasons that I will state later on this page, I want that change to be reversed, by repealing the 17th Amendment.  This would be an explicitly legal process.  The 21st Amendment to the Constitution repealed the 18th Amendment.  This page on the website of the History Channel is about the ratification of the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933.

Introduction to the 17th Amendment

This is the complete text of this amendment, on this page of U.S. Constitution.net.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

This page says that this amendment was proposed on May 13, 1912 and ratified on April 8, 1913.

This link, on the same page, shows the dates that each state ratified each of the amendments.  It has already been scrolled to show the dates that each state ratified the 17th Amendment.

The first modification made by the 17th Amendment

This is the text of the first paragraph in Article 1, Section 3.of the Constitution, which is copied from the U.S. Senate's web page about the Constitution.  The link to that page is at the very top of this blog page.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

The words "chosen by the Legislature thereof," were italicized on the Senate's web page because those words were changed when the 17th Amendment was ratified.

Before this amendment was ratified, Senators were chosen by the state legislators.  This gave those legislators, chosen by the people of each state, a direct ability to be advocates for the best interests of that state.  It also gave those legislators a reason to be advocates for their state.  There aren't any other procedures in the U.S. Constitution that allow Senators to have a direct voice in public policy, and when the 17th Amendment was ratified, the voices of .each state were silenced.

This is the first sentence in the 17th Amendment.

"The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote."

After this amendment was ratified, Senators were chosen by "the people thereof".  The people of each state, who are subject to trending political ideas in many forms, were given the power to elect Senators directly, by voting for them.  This power was given to the people (and taken away from state legislatures) in 1913.  Once a Senator has been elected, he will stay in office for six years unless his conduct violates the rules of the Senate or the laws of the United States.  That means that those trending political ideas would now be a part of the official business of the U.S. Senate.

Trending political ideas

This is the first paragraph of this page on the website of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State.

The French Revolution lasted from 1789 until 1799.  The Revolution precipitated a series of European wars, forcing the United States to articulate a clear policy of neutrality in order to avoid being embroiled in these European conflicts.  The French Revolution also influenced U.S. politics, as pro- and anti- Revolutionary factions sought to influence American domestic and foreign policy.

The French Revolution took place from 1789 until 1799.  The 17th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified over a hundred years later, so the U.S. Senate was still chosen by state legislatures at that time, which means that those "pro- and anti-Revolutionary factions" couldn't cause the Senate to make or modify United States laws too quickly.  Each Senator had been elected by legislatures, not directly by the people, so each Senator had a loyalty to the entire group of people of his state, as represented by his legislature.

The U.S. Civil War forced state legislators to make some long-lasting political decisions.  This is the first paragraph of this page, also located on the website of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State.

One of the most important victories won by the United States during the Civil War was not ever fought on a battlefield.  Rather, it was a series of diplomatic victories that ensured that the Confederacy would fail to achieve diplomatic recognition by even a single foreign government.  Although this success can be attributed to the skill of Northern diplomats, the anti-slavery sentiments of the European populace, and European diversion to crises in Poland and Denmark, the most important factor stills rises from the battlefields on American soil.  The Confederate states were incapable of winning enough consecutive victories to convince European governments that they could sustain independence.

Because every member of the Senate had a loyalty to his state, and not to a smaller group of politically-connected lobbyists, it was easier for each individual Senator to make the hard political choices that ensured the survival of a group of states that was later reunited, even though Abraham Lincoln had already been assassinated at that time.

Shorter-term political trends, including a war against Mexico from 1846-1848 and a naval war in 1898 that ended Spain's domination of the Atlantic Ocean, and thus it's ability to establish colonies, were also discussed and debated by the Senate (and the House) before the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913.

The 1847 poster on the right asks for volunteers to fight in the war against Mexico.  This war was mostly fought in Mexico.  The first paragraph of this page on the website of the History Channel shows the result of the end of this war.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, ended the Mexican-American War in favor of the United States.  The war had begun almost two years earlier, in May 1846, over a territorial dispute involving Texas.  The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the including the land that makes up all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.  Mexico also gave up all claims to Texas and recognized the Rio Grande as America’s southern boundary.

The counterbalance to trending political ideas

Under the terms of the U.S. Constitution, treaties must be approved by the Senate.  It is therefore an important benefit to the United States for the Senate to be composed of people who are not subject to the political fads that have the potential to cause long-term damage to the economic and military security of the United States.

Temporary political emotions might have led the Senate to vote against the approval of The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  Temporary political emotions might still lead the Senate to approve some treaties that will not offer a long-term benefit to the United States.  Link to my March 2013 essay Three Bad United Nations Treaties.  This essay has a sequel, dated November 2013, called The Tricky Treaty Trap.  The sequel explains the process for ratifying a treaty.

I am happy that the Senate has not ratified the three treaties that are mentioned in the first essay, but because the Senate has been elected by the people since 1913, the risk that the U.S. Senate might approve these bad treaties is greater now than it would be if the Senators were elected by their state legislators.

Political and economic trends that happened after 1913, including ...

• the first World War (and the necessarily harsh payments that Germany was required to make after that war),
• the world-wide economic depression of the early 1930s,
• Germany's hyperinflation (caused by the payments they made to the victors of the first world war,
• the rise of national socialism in Germany as a direct result of the economic crisis there,
• the need of the German people for a leader to deal with the crisis, and
• the election of Adolph Hitler as Germany's Chancellor, and later, its' President, in 1934

... were discussed and debated by the Senate (and the House), but after 1913, these economic and political trends were discussed and debated by Senators who had a loyalty directly to the people who elected them.  This makes them all subject to the short-term political trends that, if it were to become legislation and then law, might harm the United States.

This video was uploaded by the American Heroes Channel.

This video shows a 1939 rally in support of Nazi Germany that was held in Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was well-attended, so some of the Senators, who were now elected by the people, would have been sympathetic to the issues that were mentioned at this rally.

On August 23, 2017, the Politico Magazine wrote this article which linked the 1939 Nazi rally with an August 12, 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The rise of national socialism, as an economic trend in the 1930s, lasted longer than whatever trend was responsible for the August 2017 rally.  There are credible reports that the original participants in the 2017 rally were actors, sent there to cause an overreaction.

This phenomenon is sometimes called a false flag operation.  These are the first four paragraphs of an August 23, 2017 CNN story, which highlights the short-term nature of this rally.  Both of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.

(CNN) The whole Charlottesville protest was a purposeful provocation by the liberal left to hurt President Trump.

That's the view of several Trump supporters CNN's Alisyn Camerota sat down with to gauge their views of current events and how President Donald Trump is handling them.  One segment of that conversation -- focused on racially charged violence in Charlottesville -- aired this morning.

"I think a great portion of it is a conspiracy," said L.A. Key.  "I think it was a setup."  Asked by Camerota who organized this conspiracy, Key responded: "I think people who want to derail our President."

Later, Key added that protesters were "coming off the same bus with some wearing Black Lives Matter and some wearing the KKK shirts.  They were brought in to cause a controversy. Right?"

Whether actors, dressed like protesters, wearing two different sets of costumes, "got off the same bus" or not, this is a short-term issue, so it should not be discussed by Senators whose terms last for six years and whose loyalty should be to their states, not to the popular trends of small but loud groups of people.

One more trending political issue

These are the first three paragraphs of a November 15, 2016 story in The Hill, which also highlights the short-term nature of a very bad concept in political science.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in the story.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) will introduce legislation on Tuesday to get rid of the Electoral College, after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election despite leading in the popular vote.

"In my lifetime, I have seen two elections where the winner of the general election did not win the popular vote," Boxer said in a statement. "In 2012, Donald Trump tweeted, 'The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.' I couldn't agree more. One person, one vote!"

She added that Clinton, whom she supported, is "on track to have received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama.""The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately," she said.

"The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately," she said.

A United States Senator spoke those words, soon after the results of a presidential election that her favorite presidential candidate lost.  This is not the time to be making changes in the United States Constitution, but because Senators are elected by a popular vote instead of being elected by state legislators, short-term trends may influence the official business of the Senate.

Watch U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer argue with a Catholic Priest during a meeting of a Senate Committee. Ever since 1913, Senators have been elected by a popular vote.

If she had been elected by her state legislature, she would have had less reason to argue with this priest about climate change, and she would have had less reason to vote in favor of a 2015 agreement with Iran, which the U.S. Department of State refers to as a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The following tweet was made by Senator Boxer.  If you click on the date at the end of the tweet, you will see it on her Twitter account.

This agreement isn’t based on trust. It’s based on the most stringent inspections regime ever negotiated. #IranDeal

— Sen. Barbara Boxer (@SenatorBoxer) September 10, 2015

These are the first three paragraphs of a July 8, 2016 CNN story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their story.

Washington (CNN) Iran tried to acquire technology that could be used for a military nuclear program, calling into question whether it is living up to an international agreement intended to curb such an effort, according to Germany's domestic intelligence service.

The intelligence report from the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution found that despite the deal Iran has continued its "illegal proliferation-sensitive procurement activities" at a "quantitatively high level."

"This holds true in particular with regard to items which can be used in the field of nuclear technology," the report added.

The next paragraphs of the CNN story show that the U.S. State Department disagrees with the conclusion of the report, but in July 2016, the U.S. State Department, including Secretary of State John Kerry, reported to President Barak Obama, a known liar.

These are the first two paragraphs of an English-language September 11, 2016 story on the website of Deutsche Welle, a German broadcaster.  Link to their profile page.

For the second time, Iran has surpassed the 130 metric tonne threshold for heavy water, used to cool reactors that can produce substantial amounts of plutonium, according to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In a report issued on Wednesday, the agency monitoring the deal between Iran and six world powers noted that Iran had served notice it would resolve the issue by exporting 5 metric tonnes, substantially over the 100 kilogram (220 pound) excess amount.  The shipment is believed to be leaving the country within the next few days.

"This agreement ... is based on the most stringent inspections regime ever negotiated."
- U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer

If Senators were chosen by their state legislatures, the California state legislature might have chosen someone else to represent them in the United States Senate at some time during her political career.

There are two features of the U.S. Constitution that prevent short-term and sometimes very emotional trends from being enacted into law.

• The electoral college link to my essay about it
• The requirement that Constitutional amendments be proposed by 2/3rds of the Congress (or by an Article 5 process) and then ratified by 3/4th of the states (or by another part of the Article 5 process

A third long-term feature of the Constitution, the election of Senators by their own state legislators, was changed by the 17th amendment.  This increases the possibility that short-term issues, including climate change, adverse election results, and Iran's nuclear program, might cause long-term damage to the United States.

The right place to discuss short-term political issues

Short-term issues belong in the House of Representatives, whose terms only last for two years and whose members have always been elected by a popular vote (a vote directly by individual people at individual polling locations).  This situation allows for that house of Congress to discuss and debate many issues.  This situation also allows for many more people to have contact with someone who is a member of Congress because there are over 400 members of the House of Representatives, as opposed to only 100 Senators.

Simple arithmetic says that each member of the House represents fewer people than each Senator, so each U.S. Representative has more time than each Senator to listen to the concerns of one member of his state.

The second modification made by the 17th Amendment

This is the text of the second paragraph in Article 1, Section 3.of the Constitution.  The link to that page is at the beginning of the section titled "Introduction to the 17th Amendment".

Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes.  The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.

These italicized words were shown this way on the Senate's website.  They were modified by Section 2 of the 17th Amendment.  This is the text of that section.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any state in the Senate, the executive authority of such state shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies:  Provided, that the legislature of any state may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This change is similar to the change that was made by Section 1 of the 17th Amendment.  Before this amendment was ratified, any vacancy in the Senate was filled by "the Executive", which means the Governor of that state.  After the 17th Amendment was ratified, vacancies are now filled by an election where the people vote.  These are the same people who are subject to short-term political trends.

The third and last section of the 17th Amendment prohibits it from affecting "the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution."

Laws that are enforced in the United States include the decisions of Federal courts.  One relevant court case, is titled Reynolds vs. Sims.  A website called Nolo summarized the case this way.

A U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the voting districts of state legislatures must have roughly equal populations.  The decision was based on the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and is sometimes known as the "one person, one vote" rule.

The history of the 17th Amendment

This is the complete text of this page of a U.S. Government website called Our Documents.

The Constitution, as it was adopted in 1788, made the Senate an assembly where the states would have equal representation.  Each state legislature would elect two senators to 6-year terms.  Late in the 19th century, some state legislatures deadlocked over the election of a senator when different parties controlled different houses, and Senate vacancies could last months or years.  In other cases, special interests or political machines gained control over the state legislature.  Progressive reformers dismissed individuals elected by such legislatures as puppets and the Senate as a "millionaire’s club" serving powerful private interests.

One Progressive response to these concerns was the "Oregon system," which utilized a state primary election to identify the voters’ choice for Senator while pledging all candidates for the state legislature to honor the primary’s result.  Over half of the states adopted the "Oregon system," but the 1912 Senate investigation of bribery and corruption in the election of Illinois Senator William Lorimer indicated that only a constitutional amendment mandating the direct election of Senators by a state’s citizenry would allay public demands for reform.

When the House passed proposed amendments for the direct election of Senators in 1910 and 1911, they included a "race rider" meant to bar Federal intervention in cases of racial discrimination among voters.  This would be done by vesting complete control of Senate elections in state governments.  A substitute amendment by Senator Joseph L. Bristow of Kansas provided for the direct election of Senators without the "race rider."  It was adopted by the Senate on a close vote before the proposed constitutional amendment itself passed the Senate.  Over a year later, the House accepted the change, and on April 8, 1913, the resolution became the 17th amendment.

The text of this website says that the original operation of the Senate was simultaneously noble and democratic.  It gave equal representation to each state, yet the Senate still had the noble ability to advise the President on the appointments to his own cabinet, as well as his ambassadors and Federal judges.  The Senate also had the legal ability to withhold their approval of any of these appointments and thus to deny the President some ability to act like a king.

The Senate still has all of these powers, but because the membership of the Senate is now subject to the short-term political fads of each decade, its' ability to participate in our government, and thus to strengthen it, was reduced when the 17th Amendment was ratified.

Summary

At the beginning of this essay, I quoted part of a page that is found on the website of the U.S. Senate.  That page describes the U.S. Constitution in a way that the Preamble to the Constitution does not, because the Preamble was written without any ability to see how well this document would survive as the foundational document of a new nation.  Link to my October 2012 essay about the Preamble.

As I did at the top of this page, let me quote the first sentence in the third paragraph of that web page.

"For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers successfully separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments."

Before 1913, the Constitution did balance various competing interests, usually by dividing political power among three large branches of the U.S. Government and by giving each large stakeholder (legislators, presidents, judges, states, and the populace) a relatively proportional ability to influence public policy.  This balanced approach has been broken since 1913.  States have less ability to speak and be heard because state legislatures can no longer choose who will represent them in the. U.S. Senate.  This is the complete text of the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Any and all political power that isn't explicitly given to the three branches of the United States Government under the terms of the first three articles of the Constitution is then given "...to the States respectively, or to the people."

No part of this amendment has ever been modified by any other amendment that I'm aware of, yet the power of the States has been diluted by allowing emotions and political fads to influence the election of the Senators who will exercise their Constitutional ability to advise the president and, sometimes, to withhold their consent.

These people agree with me

Link to an undated article on the website of the Lonang Institute, titled Repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment: A Step Toward the Restoration of Federalism in America, which includes an examination of James Madison’s notes of the debates of the Constitutional Convention.  This article is well-documented.  It includes references to five different Federalist Papers and 69 footnotes.

The following dated articles are arranged chronologically, oldest first.

These are the first two paragraphs of a February 22, 2009 column, written by George Will, on the website of the Washington Post.  The links in these paragraphs were in the column.

A simple apology would have sufficed.  Instead, Sen. Russ Feingold has decided to follow his McCain-Feingold evisceration of the First Amendment with Feingold-McCain, more vandalism against the Constitution.

The Wisconsin Democrat, who is steeped in his state's progressive tradition, says, as would-be amenders of the Constitution often do, that he is reluctant to tamper with the document but tamper he must because the threat to the public weal is immense:  Some governors have recently behaved badly in appointing people to fill U.S. Senate vacancies.  Feingold's solution, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor, is to amend the 17th Amendment.  It would be better to repeal it.

These are the first three paragraphs of an article dated February 6, 2013 on the website of The Beacon, on the website of The Independent Institute.

The 17th Amendment is in its centennial year, having been ratified in 1913.  The Amendment mandates the direct election of senators.  Prior to its passage, Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution specified, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each state chosen by the Legislature thereof...”  The 17th Amendment replaces this language, stating, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each state, elected by the people thereof...”  In hindsight, the Amendment is a part of the Progressive agenda that has led to the growth of the federal government, and has been a significant factor in the transfer of power to the federal government from the states.  It should be repealed.

For most of the nation’s history, until the passage of the 17th Amendment, senators were chosen by their state legislatures, which meant that the Senate represented the interests of the state governments.  There is a solid rationale for this in a federal system of government.  Legislation must be approved by both the House and the Senate, which meant, prior to the 17th Amendment, that legislation had to be approved by the representatives of the people, in the House, and the representatives of the state governments, in the Senate.  This was a more substantial barrier to the passage of legislation than after the 17th Amendment, when both the House and the Senate represent the same constituencies.

By making it easier for Congress to pass legislation, the 17th Amendment increased the power of the federal government, which has been one factor (albeit, among many) that has led to the substantial growth of the federal government in the century since the Amendment was ratified.

These are the first two paragraphs of a three-paragraph October 19, 2013 column, on the website of Red State.

The major reason why there’s so much overspending and assaults by the federal government on states rights is because it was allowed to happen through the direct election of senators.  Before the establishment of the 17th amendment senators were appointed by the states as as a way of safeguarding their rights.  That’s the reason why every state each has 2 senators so as to give them each an equal voice.

The House of Representatives is the people’s house while the senate is at least suppose to be the states house.  But that hasn’t been so since this horrid amendment was introduced and enacted.  I guarantee you that Obamacare would’ve never passed if the 17th amendment wasn’t introduced or enacted at least.  Part of the process of taking back our constitutional liberties is to return power which has been lost back to the states.  Let Harry Reid know he’s not king of the Senate.

This is the first paragraph of a February 25, 2016 TownHall story.

In a bit of unusual news, the Utah Senate voted 20-6 to ask Congress to repeal the 17th Amendment of the Constitution.  The 17th Amendment allows for the direct election of senators.  The bill's sponsor, Sen. Al Jackson (R-Highland) argued that the 17th Amendment was not what the founders of the country had intended and changed the meaning of the role of the senators.

Mike Huckabee, who was the Governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007 made this tweet.  If you click on the date at the end of it, you will see it on his timeline.

Time to repeal 17th Amendment. Founders had it right-Senators chosen by state legislatures. Will work for their states and respect 10th amid

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 28, 2017

This July 31, 2017 story in Town Hall and this July 31, 2017 story in the Christian News Service mention Mr. Huckabee's objection to the amendment.

An August 8, 2017 article on the website Northern Virginia Daily says that a good reason for the repeal is that Senators sometimes don't act in the best interests of their state.  The article then continues with these paragraphs.

[Arizona Senator John] McCain and [Alaska Senator Lisa] Murkowski may be the latest to go against the wishes of their own state, but they’re not the only ones.  Look at Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.  Just last week he said, “The key here is to be fair to the 11 million illegal immigrants starting with the Dreamers… To the people who object to this, I don’t want you to vote for me because I cannot serve you well.”  Does anyone really think that the average South Carolina voter supports amnesty for 11 million illegals?  Does anyone really think the good people of Indiana supported then-Sen. Evan Bayh being the decisive 60^th vote for Obamacare?  Same with then-Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson.

For the record, Graham has a 45 percent approval rating in South Carolina.  But he knows that the opposition to him will be fractured in any primary, and thus he keeps getting re-nominated each six years, and thus keeps getting reelected.  He may not be popular with South Carolinians, but is popular with those who profit off of illegal immigration, aka the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  In the same poll of South Carolina voters, Tim Scott has a much higher approval rating.  The list goes on and on.

Having a U.S. senator selected by our 60-plus Republican House of Delegate members and our 21 senators in Virginia would be preferable to having big money select Mark Warner or Tim Kaine.  Does anyone really think that after voting for Obamacare, that Mark Warner would have been reappointed by Dave LaRock or Ben Cline or Todd Gilbert?  Of course not!  The U.S. senators would have to do the bidding of the people of Virginia and the legislature – not what Big Pharma or Big Corn or Big whatever you call it wants.

These are the first five paragraphs of an August 8, 2017 article on the website of The Federalist Society titled It’s Time To Repeal The 17th Amendment And End Direct Election Of Senators.

If you asked me to name one thing America could do right now to remedy many of our national problems, my response would be simple:  Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.  Do it yesterday.

The Framers of the Constitution originally gave state legislatures the power to participate in federal lawmaking by choosing senators to represent their interests in Washington.  Through a campaign of misinformation, progressive reformers successfully removed that rightful power from the states.  It’s high time we gave it back.

The History of A Mistake

When the Constitutional Convention first considered how Congress would be constructed, James Wilson proposed that the people should directly elect their senators, rather than state legislatures.  His idea was soundly defeated by a 10-1 vote.  Indeed, scholars have since noted that legislative election of senators “was one of the few non-controversial decisions reached by the Constitutional Convention.”  None of the state ratification conventions objected to the proposal either.

Yet in the late 1800s, the Progressive movement turned its ire on this constitutional provision. With their unshakeable belief in the moral rightness of democracy, progressives argued that legislative election of senators led inevitably to state-level political corruption. Their revisionist historians painted a picture of a vast political conspiracy, in which state elections were regularly bought and sold by local party machines to elect senators who would serve the interests of the elites above those of the people. (For all you film buffs, they argued that the conflict portrayed in the excellent movie “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” was the rule, rather than the exception.)

But as many historians have recognized, the data simply wasn’t on progressives’ side. Only three senatorial elections were investigated for corruption between 1857 and 1900. And over more than a century of legislative election of senators, only ten total elections were contested for impropriety of any sort. State electoral deadlocks over selection of federal senators were also rarer than progressives claimed, and most state legislatures dealt with such disagreements while continuing to govern.

I agree with part of this author's comments.  Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment, but do it today.

These three paragraphs are part of an interview with Congressman Cory Mills that was published December 21, 2024 in the Gateway Pundit.  He represents a Florida District.

I'm the only member of Congress who donates my salary to a woman, child, or veteran charity in my district or other areas. This isn't about making money. It is mutually exclusive. You can't have public service and personal enrichment.

This has to be about the American people. That's what our Founding Fathers intended it to be. And I can tell you that what we're doing right here is not about serving the American people. It's about continuing to have DCs growth, greed, and feeding it with American taxpayer dollars. And that's not what I'm about. I'm a 10th amendment absolutist.

You want to fix this, abolish the 17th amendment, return things back to the states and individual rights, and because those powers will return to the states, you won't have a need to have as much. DC bureaus, departments, and agencies, you will reduce the size of government here in DC, which is reducing the size of spending, and now we can start getting fiscal sanity and responsibility.

These are the first four paragraphs of a thesis written in April 2016 by a student named Derek Muncy at Malone University, a faith-based school located in Ohio.

In Federalist 45, Madison writes that “The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.”  He also wrote that the national government would never employ a large bureaucracy nor would it maintain an extensive role of governance during peace time.  The main purpose in writing Federalist 45 was to insure the individual states that their rights were not going to be crushed under the new national government.  The large centralized state was one of our founders’ biggest and most legitimate fears.

Today,it seems that our founders’ fears have been realized.  The large, central managerial national government of the United States influences your daily life from the food you eat to the interest rate on your bank account.  State governments, while still visible, are not comparable in the size or influence of the national government.  No one even refers to themselves as an Ohioan or Pennsylvanian any more.  The majority of both the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers are dedicated to articulating or defending this fear of a large central government.  In fact, it was the will of the Constitutional Convention to eliminate the phrase “National government” from the new Constitution.

So, what has led to the dramatic growth of the national government?  Many point to the usurpation of power caused by Franklin Roosevelt and The New Deal.  This argument can be easily justified by the simple number of federal acts and agencies created under the New Deal.  Some might even point to the precedent set by President Lincoln in the Civil War.  However, I believe that the growth of the national government can be credited more fundamentally to the systemic elimination of the powers and influence originally granted to the individual states.  We can identify numerous usurpations of power by the national government imposed on the state governments beginning with the Civil War.  No branch of the national government is exempt from this claim.  There have been countless executive orders, legislative acts, and Supreme Court rulings that have each slowly striped state power and legitimacy away.  However, the most egregious and destructive usurpation of power was the Seventeenth Amendment.

The ratification of the Seventeenth amendment marks the repeal of the Great Compromise. In1913, the Seventeenth amendment to the Constitution was ratified ending the appointment of Senators by the individual state legislatures.  For the first time in 124 years, Senators would not be appointed by the state legislatures.  The individual states were no longer seen as constituents of the national government.  This amendment was fundamentally a product of the “Progressive movement.”  This movement, which will be explained more in the first section,attempted to increase democracy in every aspect of political life and thwart the economic power and wealth of the industrialist millionaires.  Both the 16th and Seventeenth amendments are seen as limits to both the wealth and power of the industrialist bourgeoisie.

The President and the Governor - updates

On November 8, 2016, America elected a new President, and North Carolina elected a new Governor.  The relationship between the United States and the State of North Carolina, which I wrote about in The President and the Governor and in The President and the Governor, part 2, changed when Donald Trump and Roy Cooper took office last January.  This page documents those changes.

Note: Some of these updates were already added to the previous pages.

The President and the Governor, published May 9, 2016

The President and the Governor, part 2, published May 18, 2016

Bathroom Bills in other states

Note: The dates in these section headings are the dates that I added the update to the page.

August 3, 2016

These are the first paragraphs of a Reuters story dated today.

A Virginia school board may temporarily block a student who was born a girl from using the boys' bathroom while a legal fight over transgender rights proceeds on appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court said on Wednesday.

The case is the first time the fight over transgender bathroom rights has reached the Supreme Court. The subject arrived in the heat of a U.S. presidential election in which the makeup of the court is a central issue.

In a brief order, the country's highest court put on hold an order from a lower court that had permitted the high school student to use the bathroom of his choice.

I have some questions about this news story.  The Supreme Court usually takes a vacation in July and August, yet this Reuters story was published on August 3rd, indicating a recent order from the Supreme Court.  Is this really a recent order, or did a Reuters assignment editor miss this order when it was made months earlier?  The date of the order isn't mentioned in the story.  I will have to do some further research to find out.

August 22, 2016, part 1

A federal appeals court in Texas has made a ruling in a similar case, but that judge made his ruling on different grounds.

These are the first two paragraphs of an August 22, 2016 Bloomberg Politics story.

The Obama administration was barred by a judge from enforcing a directive that U.S. public schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender identity.

A federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday sided with Texas and 12 other states that argued the administration’s policy usurps local control and threatens students’ safety and privacy.

As I said in Part 2 of this essay, the wording of the first sentence is incorrect.  A judge's ruling goes into effect immediately unless he voluntarily "stays" his ruling.  There is no stay mentioned in the Bloomberg story, so there is no delay of the ruling, which means that the Obama Administration is barred by a judge from enforcing the directive of the Justice Department regarding public school bathrooms, shower rooms, and other facilities where privacy is important to students who are sometimes shy about exposing their bodies to the opposite sex and to the public in general.

Link to a similar story, but worded correctly, written by an Associated Press reporter.  These are the first three paragraphs.

A federal judge in Texas has blocked the Obama administration's order that requires public schools to let transgender students use the bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.

In a temporary injunction signed Sunday, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the federal education law known as Title IX "is not ambiguous" about sex being defined as "the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth."

The judge said his order, which applies nationwide, was not about the policy issues of transgender rights but his conclusion that federal officials simply did not follow rules that required an opportunity for comment before such directives are issued.

The U.S. Supreme Court has a limited amount of time to hear and decide cases, so many lawyers who want their clients to go to this court for ultimate justice are, unfortunately, denied the opportunity, but when this court does decide to hear and decide a case, one common reason for this decision is when two different appeals courts have different rulings on similar cases.  This circumstance is now close to coming true.  North Carolina and Texas both have similar legislation, and both states have taken similar statewide action against the liberal actions of a large city in their state.

If I see updates on these legal cases, I will post them here as a more complete look at the relationship between elected officials, which is the theme of this blog.

August 22, 2016, part 2

While I was researching this story, I found another story that is very similar to the North Carolina story.  Their new law, called House Bill 2, was passed by their legislature because the City of Charlotte had passed a city ordinance requiring that all bathrooms, shower rooms, and other similar places where private intimacy is expected must be accessible to people who believe that they are a member of the opposite sex than the body they were born with.

The City of Houston, Texas passed a city ordinance that is similar to the ordinance passed by the City of Charlotte, North Carolina, but in Texas, their court system, not their legislature, told the city "no".  These are the first two paragraphs of a July 24, 2016 Washington Times story.  The links in these paragraphs were in their story.

The Texas Supreme Court gave Friday the Houston city council 30 days either to repeal a civil-rights ordinance allowing opposite-sex bathroom use or place it before the voters on the November ballot.

The 12-page decision says that the council ran afoul of the city charter when it refused to act after the city secretary certified a year ago the signatures submitted by a pastor-led coalition, which had moved to force a vote on the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).

The next paragraph of this story is about a separate issue.  Houston's mayor, who is mentioned in the story, had issued a subpoena for the text of the sermons of five ordained members of the clergy.  This story mentions that incident and the fact that this subpoena was withdrawn when a large number of people objected to it.

The story also mentions that Houston has a deadline of August 24th to file an appeal of the order which blocks the city ordinance.

March 31, 2017

This tweet was written by the Governor of Texas.  If you click on the date, you will see this tweet, as it appears on his Twitter account.

Looks like the naysayers were wrong: With bathroom bill North Carolina economy expanding, tourism thriving #txlege https://t.co/oTr4wbSoR0

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 28, 2017

A different Mayor, but it's the same issue.

This is the first paragraph of a February 21, 2017 story in the Canada Free Press.  The link was in their story.

Liberty Counsel released a three-page legal memorandum today proving that Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry can still legally veto the so-called “Human Rights Ordinance” (HRO), 2017-15, passed by the City Council last week.  The ordinance is not final law until after the next City Council meeting on Tuesday, February 28, 2017.

This is the fourth paragraph of the same story.

Because Mayor Curry still has the legal power to veto the HRO, hundreds of Jacksonville women are gathering this Wednesday, February 22, 2017, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m., for a rally and press conference outside on the sidewalks around City Hall and in Hemming Plaza.   At 12:30 p.m., various women are scheduled to make public statements to the media urging the mayor to veto the HRO because the law would force them and their daughters to shower, dress and use bathrooms with men. 

A different Governor, but it's still the same issue

These are the first three paragraphs of a March 30, 2017 CNN story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their story.

(CNN)North Carolina lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill that repeals the state's controversial bathroom law in a move meant to end a year of tumult that saw businesses leave and major sporting events and concerts canceled.

Gov. Roy Cooper signed the measure into law, saying, "For over a year now, House Bill 2 has been a dark cloud hanging over our great state. It has stained our reputation. It has discriminated against our people and it has caused great economic harm in many of our communities."

Cooper said the new law is "not a perfect deal and it is not my preferred solution."

The governor said he wanted a law that added protections for LGBTQ North Carolinians, but said that wasn't possible with Republicans holding a supermajority in the Legislature.

This is the last quoted paragraph.

"The governor said he wanted a law that added protections for LGBTQ North Carolinians, but said that wasn't possible with Republicans holding a supermajority in the Legislature."

Links to similar stories, all published on the same day, by

National Public Radio	The Washington Post	Fox News
The New York Times	NBC News	CBS News

Governors who are determined to make policy changes as soon as they take office can't always implement those changes.  Sometimes the will of the people, as represented by a state legislature, is to keep an existing policy.

This blog focuses on the political interaction between various segments of the American people, such as the 2016 dispute between President Obama and Governor McCrory, but both men had issues with the people who elected them.

A different President, but it's still the same issue

These are the first three paragraphs of a February 21, 2017 story in The Hill.  The link in the second paragraph was in their story.

The Trump administration on Tuesday will reportedly rescind guidance to schools that bars discrimination against transgender students.

The Washington Blade reported that President Trump has approved a plan for the Justice and Education departments to send a letter to schools rescinding guidance that transgender students be allowed to use the restroom consistent with their gender identity.

The story quoted Mary Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, in reporting that the guidance would be changed on Tuesday.  She cited "reliable sources" in saying that President Trump had "green-lighted" the plan.

These are the first three paragraphs of a February 22, 2017 Washington Times story.  The links in these paragraphs were in their story.

The Trump administration revoked an Obama-era mandate compelling public schools nationwide to permit restroom and locker room access on the basis of gender identity — a move that could have significant ramifications for a case before the Supreme Court concerning transgender rights.

The Departments of Education and Justice issued a joint guidance Wednesday evening rolling back the order. The two-page “Dear Colleague Letter” said the Obama administration had failed to substantiate the claim that Title IX’s prohibition on “sex” discrimination in education also applies to gender identity.

“In these circumstances, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice have decided to withdraw and rescind the above-referenced guidance documents in order to further and more completely consider the legal issues involved,” the order reads.  “The Departments thus will not rely on the views expressed within them.”

"The Obama administration had failed to substantiate the claim that Title IX’s prohibition on “sex” discrimination in education also applies to gender identity."

Disputes between a President and a Governor are a legitimate topic for a political science essay such as this one.  Disputes between an ex-President and the current President are also a legitimate topic for this political science essay.

These are the first two paragraphs of a February 22, 2017 Fox News story.

The Trump administration Wednesday revoked federal guidelines issued by former President Barack Obama that allowed public school students to use restrooms and other facilities corresponding to their gender identity.

A document submitted to the Supreme Court by the Solicitor General's office said that the Obama-era directive issued this past May did not "undergo any formal public process" or explain how the directive was "consistent with the express language of Title IX," the federal law outlawing sex discrimination in education and activities.

"Congress, state legislatures, and local governments are in a position to adopt appropriate policies or laws addressing this issue," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.  "The Department of Justice remains committed to the proper interpretation and enforcement of Title IX and to its protections for all students, including LGBTQ students, from discrimination, bullying, and harassment.”

Billy Graham's son is unfairly censored

These are the first six paragraphs of a December 30, 2018 Washington Examiner story. The Daily Signal is a publication of the activist part of the Heritage Foundation.

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, was banned from posting on Facebook for 24 hours after a 2016 post of his was flagged for "dehumanizing language."

Following the ban Graham said in a Facebook post on Friday that the flagged statement, which was from April, was about North Carolina's "bathroom bill" that focused on which bathrooms transgender individuals were legally allowed to use.

She also shared the content of that flagged post, urging his followers to judge whether it contained hate speech.  The post was critical of Bruce Springsteen canceling a North Carolina concert over the bill's existence.

"Bruce Springsteen, a long-time gay rights activist, has cancelled his North Carolina concert," Graham wrote.  "He says the NC law #HB2 to prevent men from being able to use women's restrooms and locker rooms is going 'backwards instead of forwards.'  Well, to be honest, we need to go back!  Back to God.  Back to respecting and honoring His commands.  Back to common sense."

Facebook said the ban was made in error by Facebook's content review team, which has upward of 15,000 employees, and said that it was a mistake to take Graham's original post down.

“A page admin for Franklin Graham’s Facebook page did receive a 24-hour feature block after we removed a post for violating our hate speech policies," a Facebook spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.  "Upon re-reviewing this content, we identified that the post does not violate our hate speech policy and has been restored.”

A similar story was published in The Hill on the same day.

The photo below was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1967.  The caption underneath it was the one they used.

Evangelist Billy Graham preaches to about 40,000 people attending "Reformation Services" at Polo Grounds in New York City in 1967 as part of the Protestant Council of Churches' "Visitation Week."

A reason for making changes to Texas state law

These are the first six paragraphs of a March 3, 2017 Daily Signal article. The Daily Signal is a publication of the activist part of the Heritage Foundation.

Texas is taking measures to protect its citizens from laws that hinder “common sense and public safety” when it comes to transgender persons being allowed to use both men’s and women’s restrooms.

“This is a public safety issue,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, said during a conference call with reporters Friday.

Legislation filed by Texas state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, seeks to ensure that men and women use separate bathrooms.

Kolkhorst said the bill, titled the Texas Privacy Act, will clarify who will be allowed to enter both men’s and women’s restrooms.

“I don’t view this bill as a transgender bill,” Kolkhorst said in the conference call.  “It truly is about public safety … It is not against the law for a man to enter a woman’s restroom dressed looking like a man.  There is nothing on the books here in Texas.”

The gender on a person’s birth certificate would determine which bathroom Texans could use.

The issue is very simple.  When someone is using a bathroom or the changing room of a department store, they are temporarily vulnerable because they are temporarily semi-dressed.  The legislation that this organization (and others) wishes to promote will protect these people, some of whom are children, against sexual predators, some of whom are named in news stories later on this page as being convicted of sexual crimes.

Texas legislation

All five of these are clickable links to the text of the bill.  The language of any bill can be changed at any time by any amendment that receives the approval of a majority of that part of the Texas State Legislature.

Note: The "political subdivisions" of a state are its' cities and towns.  The Governor of any state can order a city or a town to stop performing its' official duties.  This happened to four towns in my home state of Massachusetts.  Legislation was passed in the state legislature in 1927 that gave those four towns until a date in 1938 to abandon all property because a water reservoir was being planned.  Link to a history of those towns.

• House Bill 46, An act relating to the regulation of discrimination by political subdivisions


• House Bill 50, An act relating to the regulation of discrimination by school districts


• Senate Bill 3, An act relating to the regulation of certain facilities and activities of political subdivisions, including public school districts, and open-enrollment charter schools


• Senate Bill 23, An act relating to prohibition of certain regulations by a county, municipality, or other political subdivision


• Senate Bill 91, An act relating to the regulation of certain facilities and activities of political subdivisions, including public school districts, and open-enrollment charter schools

The following updates are listed in chronological order, oldest first.

This July 11, 2017 news story on the website of the CBS affiliate in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas says that legislation designed to protect bathroom privacy has been filed for a 30-day special session of the Texas legislature.

This July 21, 2017 news story on the website of the New York Times offers a balanced view of this issue, and that is a refreshing change.  The news story quotes people on both sides of the issue.  The headline of this story doesn't characterize either side but simply shows the fact that this is an issue that many people care about.  That journalistic balance is very different than many of the stories that they published during the 2016 presidential campaign.

A bill was passed  21-10 by the Texas State Senate, according to this July 26, 2017 Fox News Story.

These are the first two paragraphs of an August 15, 2017 Dallas Morning News story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their story.  I added this quote and the link to the next story, by C.N.N., on November 10, 2017.

AUSTIN — The Texas bathroom bill is dead — for now.

In an unexpected move late Tuesday, the Texas House wrapped up its business a day ahead of the official end of the 30-day special session, killing any hopes the legislation could be revived in the 11th hour. The Senate adjourned just a few hours later, and lawmakers went home for the second time this year without passing a bathroom bill.

C.N.N. reported a similar story on August 16, 2017.

The Hill reported a similar story on August 16, 2017.

Reuters reported a similar story on August 16, 2017.

I may not notice immediately if any of these bills are passed by both houses of the Texas state legislature and is then signed into law by the Texas Governor, but if I find out that this has happened, I will update this section accordingly.

One reason for maintaining gender-specific bathrooms

This section was added on November 10, 2017.  Note that the first crime happened in a home, but another sex crime happened in a the changing room of an American department store, as documented later in this section.

Still other sex crimes have been documented on another essay on my home-state blog.  One incident was witnessed by the Georgia State Director of the American Civil Liberties Union.  In fact, this happened to her own children, which is why she resigned from that organization.  This June 2, 2016 Reuters story about her resignation is one of several links that are included on that blog page.

The October 16, 2017 trial

These are the first five paragraphs of an October 16, 2017 story in the Billings, WY Gazette.

The jury trial for a Casper resident charged with sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl began Monday.

Miguel Martinez faces one count of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor and one count of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. If found guilty, Martinez could face up to 70 years in prison.

Martinez's public defender, Tracy Hucke, said at a previous hearing that her client identifies as a woman and uses the name Michelle.

The 10-year-old's mother reported to Casper police in March that her daughter said Martinez sexually assaulted her in a bathroom.

The girl told police that Martinez, who is a family friend, invited her into the bathroom, touched her breasts and genitalia before penetrating her. Nurses at the Wyoming Medical Center completed a sexual assault exam and found redness and abrasions on the girl's genitalia.

This is the third paragraph.

"Martinez's public defender, Tracy Hucke, said at a previous hearing that her client identifies as a woman and uses the name Michelle."

I won't identify him as a woman because he was convicted of penetrating a 10-year-old girl.  News articles that document his conviction are included in this section.

He is a convicted criminal and as such, he doesn't deserve as much respect as those of us who are capable of obeying the laws of God and man.

The photo of Miquel on the right was included in the news story in the Billings Gazette.

This story was also reported by these other websites.  They are listed in chronological order, oldest first.

The Casper, WY Star-Tribune, October 16, 2017

KTWO Radio in Casper, Wyoming, October 16, 2017

The Casper, WY Star-Tribune reported on October 17, 2017 that the victim, a 10-year-old girl, gave video testimony.

The Daily Caller, October 18, 2017

The October 19, 2017 conviction

These are the first two paragraphs of an October 19, 2017 story in the Billings, WY Gazette.  I quoted an October 16, 2017 story on the same website about the beginning of his trial.

A Casper resident was found guilty Wednesday of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.

A 12-person jury found Miguel Martinez guilty of first-degree and second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Martinez could face up to 70 years in prison.

The story of his conviction was reported by these websites.  They are also listed in chronological order, oldest first.

This video was uploaded on October 19, 2017.

KTWO Radio, October 18, 2017 Fox News, October 19, 2017 The Daily Caller, October 19, 2017 The New York Post, October 20, 2017 KFI Radio, October 20, 2017

The U.K. Daily Mail, October 20, 2017 (updated October23, 2017)

The July 2016 crime in the department store dressing room

Note: The October 19 Daily Caller story linked to this July 13, 2016 Daily Caller story about a man who was arrested for taking photos of women in a women's dressing room at a Target store.

The July 13, 2016 Daily Caller story linked to this July 12, 2016 story in the Idaho Falls, ID Post Gazette.

This July 13, 2016 KTVB story (based in Boise, Idaho) is about the same arrest.

This July 13, 2016 story, apparently reported by KIFI and KIDK in Idaho, is about the same arrest.

This July 13, 2016 Fox News story is about the same arrest.

This July 13, 2016 New York Daily News story is also about the same arrest.

This YouTube video,  uploaded on July 14, 2016, shows him admitting that he was a voyeur at the Target store.

These are the first two paragraphs of an October 17, 2016 East Idaho News story.

IDAHO FALLS — A transgender woman pleaded guilty to one felony count of video voyeurism Monday and admitted to filming a teenage girl undressing in a Target fitting room.

Shauna Patricia Smith, 46, whose legal name is Sean Patrick Smith, was originally scheduled for a jury trial later this month. But Smith appeared before District Judge Joel Tingey in a Bonneville County courtroom Monday and unexpectedly entered the guilty plea.

This story refers to Sean Patrick Smith (his legal name) as a woman, but he doesn't deserve the same respect as people who obey the law.

Remember, Sean Patrick Smith pleaded guilty to a felony.

California secession

The word secession is a noun.  When a part of a country leaves that country and becomes a separate and independent country, that is a seccession.


A group of states in the United States tried to secede from the United States in the 1860s.  This action caused a war to be fought, with rifles, cannons, and armed ships on both sides.

More Americans died during this war, called The Civil War, than during both of the world wars combined.

This paragraph is on the F.A.Q. page of the website Civil War Trust.  All of the links were on their page.

Q. When was the Civil War fought?
The war began when the Confederates bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.  The war ended in Spring, 1865.   Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.  The last battle was fought at Palmito Ranch, Texas, on May 13, 1865.

Link to the Google account for +Civil War Trust

These two paragraphs were on the same page.  Both of the links in the first paragraph were on their page.

Q. How many soldiers died in the Civil War?
Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from combat, accident, starvation, and disease during the Civil War.  This number comes from an 1889 study of the war performed by William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore.  Both men fought for the Union.  Their estimate is derived from an exhaustive study of the combat and casualty records generated by the armies over five years of fighting.  A recent study puts the number of dead as high as 850,000.

Q. How many soldiers died in the Civil War as compared to other American wars?
Roughly 1,264,000 American soldiers have died in the nation's wars--620,000 in the Civil War and 644,000 in all other conflicts.  It was only as recently as the Vietnam War that the amount of American deaths in foreign wars eclipsed the number who died in the Civil War.

This graphic with statistics about the dead and wounded troops came from this web page.

Near the end of this war, President Abraham Lincoln, a faithful Christian, tried to heal the wounds of the war by burying Northern and Southern soldiers who had fought and died in the same battle in a new cemetery. The President was personally present to dedicate this cemetery, and he spoke the words that are carved into the stone of his memorial, located in Washington, D.C.

This speech is called the Gettysburg Address. +Gettysburg 150th

News stories about the proposed California secession

These stories are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.

These are the first two paragraphs of a July 15, 2014 Washington Post story.  The graphic was included in the story.  All of the links in these paragraphs were also included in the story.  +Washington Post

Proponents of a ballot initiative aimed at splitting California into six states (or, more simply, one proponent: venture capitalist Tim Draper) may have collected enough signatures to put the initiative on the ballot.  This is the beauty and the annoyance of California's initiative and referenda system.  If you have enough cash, getting something on the ballot is relatively trivial, meaning that relatively trivial ideas -- like splitting California into six different states -- can be put up for a vote.  (Happily, in this instance the federal government would have to sign off on the idea, which it will never do, because, come on.)

Draper's proposal is that California become six different states, each with its own capital and senators and so on.  That's really one of the main selling points:  Why should the millions of people in California have the same number of senators as the hundreds of thousands of people in Wyoming?  And the answer is: Because you get to live by the coast and the redwoods and the beautiful people of Los Angeles and that is the price you pay.  Everyone knows that.

These are the first four paragraphs of a November 21, 2016 story in the Sacramento Bee.

“Should California become a free, sovereign, and independent country?”

The question could appear on a statewide ballot in 2018 if a group of secessionists has its way.

Yes California has been pushing for the state to break away from the United States and become its own country for several years.

Marcus Evans, the vice president of Yes California, filed a proposed ballot measure with the Attorney General’s Office on Monday that would appear on the November 2018 gubernatorial ballot.

The preceeding story from +The Sacramento Bee is a balanced story.  It includes a contrary opinion from a professor of law at the Berkeley campus of the University of California.  I copied and pasted his quoted remarks onto a later portion of this page.


Link to a story dated the next day in the Los Angeles Daily News.  This story is not balanced.  It doesn't include any reference to previous attempts to secede, and it doesn't include any mention of the low probability of success.


These are the first five paragraphs of a January 26, 2017 Fox News story.

A proposal for California to secede from the United States was submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office Thursday.

The proposed “Calexit” initiative - its name borrowed from the UK's "Brexit" departure from the EU - would ask voters to repeal part of the state constitution that declares California an inseparable part of the U.S.

A recent poll found that one in three California residents would support a possible secession from the U.S. due to their opposition to President Trump. No mention has been made of the president in the proposal.

If the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters, it could be a step to a future vote on whether the state would break away from the rest of the nation.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the group behind the proposal, Yes California Independence Campaign, was cleared to begin attempting to collect nearly 600,000 voter signatures needed to place the plan on the ballot.

This is how the fourth paragraph of the +Fox News story begins.

"If the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters ...."

Link to a similar story on the website of the Los Angeles Times, dated the same day.  This +Los Angeles Times story was linked at the end of a four-paragraph story on the website of Los Angeles television story KTLA.  Link to the Google account for +KTLA 5

Link to a similar story on the website of National Public Radio dated the next day, January 27, 2017.  Link to the Google account for +NPR and +NPR Politics

This is the complete text of an Associated Press story that was published in U.S. News and World Report on July 25, 2017.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A group that wants California to secede from the United States can start collecting signatures for its ballot initiative.

The state attorney general issued an official ballot measure title and summary Tuesday.  The campaign can now start gathering the more than 585,000 signatures it will need to qualify for the 2018 ballot.

The initiative would form a commission to recommend avenues for California to pursue its independence and delete part of the state constitution that says it is an inseparable part of the U.S.  The measure would also instruct the governor and California congressional delegation to negotiate more autonomy for the state.

This is the second attempt to put a so-called Calexit measure on the 2018 ballot.  An earlier attempt was withdrawn in April.

This is the last paragraph.

"This is the second attempt to put a so-called Calexit measure on the 2018 ballot.  An earlier attempt was withdrawn in April."

Stories about international secessionist movements

Link to a June 27, 2016 story in The Guardian about the vote by people in England to leave the European Union.  This page tells, in detail, how people in different parts of England voted.  Link to the Google account for +The Guardian


These are the first three paragraphs of this November 10, 2016 Associated Press story.  The entire story is only five paragraphs.  Link to the Google account for +The Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Portuguese rule in Angola ended in 1975, but separatists in one Angolan province want the former colonizers to return.

The Portuguese news agency Lusa reported Thursday that a separatist group in Angola's oil-rich Cabinda province wants Portugal to oversee a referendum there on the region's political future.

Militants of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda have carried out kidnappings and other attacks over the years.  They say the Cabinda enclave was never part of Angolan territory.

This January 24, 2017 page on the website of the British Broadcasting Corporation, explains what it means, in simple terms, for England to leave the European Union.  The English people voted to do that on June 23, 2016.

Other efforts to secede from the United States

These articles are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.

Armed members of the Republic of Texas separatist group took hostages in 1997.

• Link to an April 27, 1997 CNN story about the standoff.


• Link to an April 28, 1997 New York Times story.  The standoff continued, two days later.


• On May 3, 2007, the Houston Chronicle published this article, with the leader of the separatist movement convicted and serving a 99-year sentence in a Texas prison.  He still believes in his cause.

This November 14, 2012 Politico story says that America's first secession movement came from five of the six New England states.  According to this link to an Encyclopedia Britannica article that was included in their story, they were Federalists

... who were dissatisfied with Pres. James Madison’s mercantile policies and the progress of the War of 1812 (“Mr. Madison’s War”), as well as long resentful over the balance of political power that gave the South, particularly Virginia, effective control of the national government.

All three of the links in the previous paragraph were in the Encyclopedia Britannica article.

This September 17, 2014 story in the San Antonio Express-News is about a group that wants to have Texas secede from the rest of the country.

These are the first three paragraphs of a February 23, 2015 Houston Chronicle story.

It seemed like a typical congressional meeting for the Republic of Texas.  Senators and the president gathered in the center of a Bryan, Texas, meeting hall, surrounded by public onlookers, to debate issues of the national currency, develop international relations and celebrate the birthday of one of their oldest members.

But this wasn't 1836, and this would be no ordinary legislative conference.  Minutes into the meeting a man among the onlookers stood and moved to open the hall door, letting in an armed and armored force of the Bryan Police Department, the Brazos County Sheriff's Office, the Kerr County Sheriff's Office, Agents of the Texas District Attorney, the Texas Rangers and the FBI.

In the end, at least 20 officers corralled, searched and fingerprinted all 60 meeting attendees, before seizing all cellphones and recording equipment in a Valentine's Day 2015 raid on the Texas separatist group

When uniformed and armed members of law enforcement prevent people from recording their activities, they're not enforcing the law any more.  They're making their own laws, in the true spirit of a dictatorship, which is always bad news for its' own people.

This paragraph is on this undated web page of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), with funding from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), is developing a training toolkit addressing the public’s right to record police officers.  This training focuses on the public’s First Amendment right to record, limitations of this right, common police responses to recording individuals, strategies for diffusing and deflecting police-civilian confrontations, and how and when video equipment or recordings can be seized.  This toolkit, expected to be released in late 2016, will include an Instructor’s Guide, Officer Study Guide, PowerPoint Presentation, and Training Video.

This undated page on the website of The Texas Nationalist Movement explains why they want to secede.  I hope that the Texas Nationalist Movement is not as violent as the Republic of Texas group. +San Antonio Express-News

The Texas Nationalist group failed to have a committee of the Texas Republican Party approve, by a vote, their wish to have Texas secede from the Union.  Link to a May 13, 2016 Washington Post story.

A dissenting opinion from a professor of law

The November 21, 2016 story in the Sacramento Bee that I quoted earlier on this page also included these four paragraphs.  Both of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.

Daniel Farber is a law professor at U.C. Berkeley and has written about secessionist movements throughout America’s history.

Yes California’s plan to appeal to the United Nations wouldn’t hold up in court, he said.  Other countries might hesitate to embrace California as an independent nation anyway, particularly if issues of currency and military were not negotiated with the remainder of the country first.  Other nations likely wouldn’t want to “risk the blowback of being on the losing side,” he said.

The only legal avenue for California to secede requires the state to win approval by two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states in the country, he said.  Farber pointed to a Supreme Court decision, Texas vs. White, in 1869 that said Texas “entered into an indissoluble relation” when it became part of the United States.  The case related to bonds sold by Texas during the Civil War.

“I don’t think it gets to the point where we have to worry about those details and how to make it work,” Farber said.  “Many of us have had that thought from time to time, but in the end it’s not really a feasible option as far as I can see.”

"The case related to bonds sold by Texas during the Civil War."

What goes around, comes around.

Professor Farber mentioned a method that could allow the State of California to secede.  He called it "the only legal avenue", and he mentioned a legal case that the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1869, after the end of the Civil War.  This is a link to that case.

The method would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  There are two methods of proposing amendments but only one way to ratify them.  Both processes are explained in Article 5 of the Constitution.  This page, on the website of the U..S. Government agency that preserves government documents, explains the process.

This June 27, 2016 Washington Post story shows a four-step process and the odds of anyone reaching those goals.

An article published in National Review, January 29, 2017 has a very different idea, judging by the title of the article, California Shouldn’t Secede from the U.S. subtitled "It should divide in two."

The article by the +National Review advocates for a handful of coastal counties to be one state, with the rest of California being a different state.  The article includes this map of their concept.

My opinions

If the Yes California activists have their way, California will become a separate and sovereign nation, with its' own government and the legal power to establish its' own "national defense", using its' own military.  The new country called California will, of course, need to prepare to defend its' borders as a nation with potentially hostile neighbors.  This is what their border with Nevada could look like.

This is the 21st century, so the new nation would have to use more modern weapons, including chemical and biological poisons.  The video and photo below shows these weapons successfully being used in Iraq.

The video was uploaded in 2013.

So what if a few children die.  National sovereignty is more important, right, +Calexit - YesCalifornia?

The Yes California organization is studying these weapons so that they can decide how to use them effectively.  The actual implementation would, of course, have to be done by trained soldiers of the California State Police, who would become the new national army of California.

The California State Legislature has already taken many actions that are different than the attitudes of the rest of the nation.  For example, State legislation, formally called Proposition 60, was on the ballot in California on the same day when the nation voted to elect Donald Trump as President.  This legislation would have forced male actors in adult films to wear a condom while they were doing their job (having sex with an actress in adult films.  I wrote about this issue in this August 2014 blog essay, which was updated last November to show the result of the vote on Proposition 60.

Another example is a new state law that decriminalizes child prostitution.  These are the first three paragraphs of a January 4, 2017 op-ed in the Washington Times.

At the start of each new year we’re subjected to a whole host of new laws.  The modern liberal government, you see, imagines itself not as the champion of individual freedom but as Mommy and Daddy, a taskmaster charged with controlling your life.  Most of the time, it makes everything, including our lives, worse.

Case in point: California. Completely at the mercy of the left, which now controls two-thirds of the state government, California serves as a living illustration of what the left really wants to accomplish.  As of Jan. 1, that includes decriminalizing what is commonly called “child prostitution.”

They may not have technically legalized it, but decriminalizing the act per se will have the same results, while putting exploited children in even more danger.

Every group that wants to separate from its' home country is a threat to the safety and the security of that country, however some separations are justified by the oppression of the group by the political leaders of the home country.

The following words in the Declaration of Independence are a harsh accusation of the abuse of a group of British colonies by the British King.  This accusation is an explicit one, with examples of the tyranny that they have suffered.

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."

In the 1860s, a large number of the people in our southern states felt that the government in Washington was behaving tyrannically.  One of them even assassinated President Lincoln and then immediately jumped from a theater balcony to the theater stage.  He shouted the Latin phrase Sic semper tyrannis.  The English-language translation is "Thus always to tyrants".

During the years that preceded the American Revolution, a few people published their reasons for wanting to have a separate country.  These people included Benjamin Franklin.  I named my Twitter account @BennyTheKite in his honor.

He wrote Poor Richard's Almanack.

Another man who published and distributed reasons to leave Great Britain was Thomas Paine.

Let the people in California who want to leave the United States publish their reasons for wanting to leave. If their cause is just and if they are willing to fight for it, they will win their independence, but they will pay a price for it, and none of them will be able to wear the symbol on the right very proudly. +Peace Corps

Dated updates

The dates you see in the headlines are the dates that I posted the articles.

May 21, 2017

This is a link to a March 1, 2017 Atlantic Monthly article titled, Is Russia Behind a Secession Effort in California?.

Their article was accurate.  These are the first four paragraphs of an April 18, 2017 Fox News story.

The man behind the Calexit movement, which pushed for California to secede from the union, is now distancing himself from the controversial effort and said he will stay in Russia.

Louis Marinelli, who helped launch the movement to make California an independent state, said that he “intends to make Russia” his “new home.” As a result, he is withdrawing his petition for a “Calexit” referendum.

Marinelli has said in the past that in Russia he has found, “a new happiness, a life without the albatross of frustration and resentment towards ones’ homeland.”

The activist said in a statement he does not intend to return to California in the foreseeable future and therefore feels it’s only right for him to withdraw the Calexit petition.

Link to a similar article, dated the same day, in the New York Magazine.

August 15, 2017

These are the first five paragraphs of a July 25, 2017 Los Angeles Times story.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.

Supporters of a plan for California to become independent from the United States are now allowed to gather signatures for their ballot measure.

On Tuesday afternoon, Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra's office released an official title and summary for the initiative, now called the "California Autonomy From Federal Government" initiative.

The proposal, scaled back from an initially more aggressive version, would direct California's governor to negotiate more autonomy from the federal government, including potentially putting forward a ballot measure to declare independence.

The initiative wouldn't necessarily result in California exiting the country, but could allow the state to be a “fully functioning sovereign and autonomous nation” within the U.S.

Backers of the plan, known informally as "Calexit" have 180 days to collect nearly 600,000 valid signatures for the initiative to go on the 2018 ballot.

Link to a similar story, dated the same day, written by the Associated Press and published on the website of U.S. News and World Report.

Link to a similar story, dated the next day, and published by Breitbart.

August 1, 2018

These are the first three paragraphs of a July 31, 2018 Fox News story.  The graphic and caption were included in their story.  Both of the links in these paragraphs were also in their story.

California secessionists plan to retool their movement this week to include a large-scale land giveaway to Native Americans. (Calexit founder Louis J. Marinelli)

Organizers of a long-running initiative to secure California’s secession from the United States now say they want to give away nearly half of the state, including all of its federal land, to form an “autonomous Native American nation.”

“Calexit,” as the proposal for California’s secession is known, was given the green light by the state government earlier this year to begin collecting signatures to place the measure on the November ballot.  Advocates had until mid-October to gather 365,880 signatures of registered voters to put it up for a statewide vote.

But the revamp announced by Calexit’s founders on Tuesday adds an additional objective: constructing “the first ever autonomous Native American nation in North America,” by giving Native Americans all federal lands in the state, running from the border with Mexico to the state boundary shared with Oregon.

This August 1, 2018 Daily Mail (U.K.) story linked to the Fox News story.

These are the first paragraphs of a June 3, 2024 CalMatters article.

These are the first paragraphs of a press release that was issued by the California Secretary of State on January 23, 2025.

These are the first paragraphs of a January 24, 2025 USA Today story.

End