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Amendments

The 88th Session of the Texas State Legislature approved a Cost of Living (COLA) to Texas Teachers pension to go into affect 1 January 2024, if the people of Texas vote in favor of an amendment to the State Constitution. One of the reasons Texas gets a reputation for being so freedom loving is that at the end of Radical Reconstruction Texas adopted a constitution that so severely limits the power of the governor and legislature that dang near everything requires a constitutional amendment, voted for by the people, to become law.

In the original version of the Bill of Rights the second article (amendment) reads, “Article the second… No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.” It was not passed in the 1790’s but some 202-203 years later it was finally passed in response to various abuses of financial privileges by members of Congress. Nowadays it would be all but impossible to take so long to take so long to pass as most amendments have a clause requiring they be passed within five years.

Governor Gavin Newsome has proposed a 28th Amendment to the Constitution enshrining California’s gun control goals. Specifically it calls for:

• Raise the federal minimum age for all gun buyers to 21.
• Require an as-yet-unspecified “reasonable waiting period” between the time a person pays for and receives a gun.
• Require background checks for all gun purchases.
• Bar civilian purchase of assault weapons.

Additionally, the proposed amendment would throw out preemptive legislation.

Exact wording of his proposed Amendment was not available at the time this article was written.

With 27 states now demonstrating their opposition to gun control by passing permitless (AKA Constitutional) carry this proposal seems unpassable, assuming the current pro-gun majority in the House of Representatives doesn’t vote it down. Of course, if the proposed bill does not include the five year limit on passage every tragedy is a temptation to stampede into passing a bad law.

It’s been stated already that Newsome’s proposals are dead on arrival. Probably so, unless you are willing to spend a couple of centuries fighting for a goal. Which means those of us who oppose victim disarmament must be willing to fight for our rights for a couple of centuries.

Albert Perez
[email protected]

nothing lost in translation

“He jurado sobre el altar de Dios hostilidad eterna contra toda forma de tiranía sobre la mente del hombre.”
— Thomas Jefferson

With Latinos becoming a larger part of the population of the US I reckon it has become important to translate some of the more essential ideas of American thought into Spanish. I also reckon this phrase by Thomas Jefferson is one of the more important to inscribe in the fleshy tablets of people’s hearts, to quote Morris Duffy S.J..

Also, with the rush to bowdlerize, censor, and flat out ban written and recorded material being engaged in by both left and right-wing wannabe political leaders and influencers, it seems that English speaking Americans need to remember these words and embrace this particular example of hate speech, “I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hatred over all forms of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Albert Perez
[email protected]