Yo people talk about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment more and more these days but the real sleeping time bomb in the U.S....
Yo people talk about the Twenty-Fifth Amendment more and more these days but the real sleeping time bomb in the U.S. Constitution is Amendment 14 Section 3
like, it allows a bare congressional majority (or perhaps just the absence of a bicameral vetoproof majority against, that doesn’t trigger Section 5) to purge the entire federal government
I don’t think it does, at all. A bare vote is allowed to let an oathbreaker in, but to keep people out it’s just “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Which does not imply they could kick out everyone by declaring them oathbreakers spuriously.I don’t get it at all. Here’s the text of Amendment XIV Section 3 as given on Wikipedia:
- Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
It seems to require a two-thirds vote to do anything under this section. Maybe the claim is it only takes a bare majority to declare the rest of the government to be providing aid and comfort to the enemy? But I don’t see that here.
