Goodbye 22nd Amendment?

[snarkyman]

This can't possibly be good. How did this ever slip under the radar?


108th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. J. RES. 11

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 7, 2003

"Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

Article--

'The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.'"


http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.J.RES.11:

Comments

The poop on DOMAs nationwide:

[sapphorlando.livejournal.com]

At this time, 41 states have some kind of legal provision installed that effects some or all of the intended purposes of what is commonly called a 'DOMA', after the federal law by that name, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. It's much easier to list the nine states that don't yet have DOMAs: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Of these nine, at least two (Connecticut and Massachusetts) have proposed some form of DOMA, and only one (Rhode Island) has stated that it will not propose such a law.

The federal DOMA has two points: First, that the federal government defines a "marriage" as only the legal union, under state law, of one man and one woman. Second, that states are not obligated to recognise or respect any legally executed marriage not meeting the federal definition under the Act. What this means is that even if some state does enact same-sex marriage, the fed does not need to respect it, nor does any other state. It does not bar states from enacting same-sex marriage on their own, nor does it bar states from recognising each other's same-sex marriages.

Individual state DOMAs, like the many 'domestic partnership' provisions around the country, are not identical, do not have the same provisions, and did not come into being by the same route.

Five states (Maryland, New York, New Hampshire, Texas, and Vermont) have a 'semi-DOMA', which provides only a state definition of marriage, but does not disallow recognition of same-sex marriages from other states. Most DOMAs, however, cover the same ground as the federal DOMA, and are modelled after it. The main purpose of these cookie-cutter DOMAs is to protect these states in the event that the federal DOMA is found unconstitutional and invalid (as many legal scholars believe it is, as it appears to violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause). It's interesting to note that if the federal DOMA falls, all DOMAs fall, but these states don't seem to understand that.

In most cases, DOMAs arrived through legislative process, but in a few cases, other routes were taken. California is one of the few states, like Massachusetts, unlucky enough to be saddled with 'ballot initiative', a funky-junky kind of lawmaking process that allows large populations to pass laws by state referendum and bypass the stodgy old legislature, who might otherwise insist on talking it over first. This is also the process by which Maine lost its statewide antidiscrimination law a few years ago, making it once again the only state in New England providing no protection for gay citizens. Anyway, California got its DOMA from well-organised street-level lobbying. Nebraska and Hawai'i went one further, by actually amending its state constitution, so that liberal nutballs down the road would have that much harder a time pushing equality for all citizens.

Massachusetts is currently enjoying Round 2 of the DOMA debate, after Speaker Finneran spiked the bill late last session--an action that seems now to have fueled the opposition rather than suppress it. (Insert my comment to him here: "I told you so.") Massachusetts' proposed DOMA is more of a 'super-DOMA', in that it seeks not only to invalidate same-sex marriage, but any similar legal provision, including, according to some analysts, all standing and proposed DP provisions anywhere in Massachusetts. The bill is being pushed by the Massachusetts Family Institute, among other sweet-natured garden clubs. The proposed Connecticut bill is essentially the same as this one, and is being pushed by Connecticut's sister group, CFI, along with the K of C, who collected tens of thousands of signatures from Roman Catholic churchgoers, at the behest of their ministers, at the request of the K of C. (The K of C are the same folks, by the way, who gave us "In God We Trust" and "under God", during the post-war religious fervour of the early 50's.)

At this point in history, a married same-sex couple cannot travel across the country through a contiguous series of states where their marriage would be considered valid. Southern New England is the largest contiguous block where such a union is still valid (or at least not clearly invalid on an interstate basis.