North Carolina ACTION ALERT!!

From Publius Huldah

Leadership Rams COS & TML thru the full House
Shady Tactics & No Transparency!

We blasted the North Carolina House on Mon. night Mar. 6, when the COS & Term Limits applications were shuffled between committees and surprise “hearings” were announced for the very next day. Little did we know that the game in the House would be over by Wednesday.

As it turned out, the March 7 “hearing” wasn’t a hearing at all. It was a meeting to ram through both applications which had been recently introduced. North Carolina could be one of the top contenders this year for the COS Dirty Tricks award!

Immediately after the committee meeting ended, the full House met, and the Speaker, who is the primary sponsor of the Term Limits application, scheduled both applications for debate and vote for the next morning. The “debate” was one-sided—possibly because there was no advance notice for our side! Both applications passed their 2nd & 3rd readings on March 8; they arrived in the Senate by March 9!

The unfair process moved at warp speed, without public participation and took about a day and a half to complete. It has to be an embarrassment to the voters of North Carolina and any decent legislators there who care about their constituents.

NC House Leadership is apparently afraid to allow the truth about an Art. V Convention to be spoken. Instead, they resort to shady tactics in order to win. Last session, the North Carolina House passed both applications, but they were subsequently blocked by the Senate Committee. With your help, we can encourage Senate Leadership to continue to defend our Constitution.

If the legislators don’t hear from us, they’ll assume we don’t care. Please write to the Senators, and make two phone calls.

Let’s go get ’em!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Legislation

Here are the applications we oppose in the North Carolina House:

HJR 235 (COS)—Passed the House. Arrived in the Senate on March 9 and is pending in the RULES AND OPERATIONS OF THE SENATE Committee. A hearing can be scheduled at any time.

HJR 151 (TML)—Passed the House. Arrived in the Senate on March 9 and is pending in the RULES AND OPERATIONS OF THE SENATE Committee. A hearing can be scheduled at any time.

Two Calls

Please leave a short message for the Senate President Pro Tempore, Phil Berger; and Chair of the Rules Committee, Sen. Bill Rabon. Tell them why they should kill HJR 235 and HJR 151. Calling after hours is fine.

Sen. Bill Rabon (R)—Senate Rules & Operations Chair:
(919) 733-5963
Sen. Phil Berger (R)—Senate President Pro Tempore: (919) 733-5708

Suggestions for Short Phone Messages:

Also let them know, in your own words, that the entire process by which the applications passed the House was non-transparent and an embarrassment to the voters of North Carolina—and that we are depending upon the NC Senate to defend our Constitution. And if you’re a Republican or conservative, tell them so!

1. Conventions can’t be limited to the subject of the application. We could lose our Constitution at an Art. V convention.
2. A convention could lead to eliminating our gun rights.
3. No one knows that each state will get one vote at a convention. NC could get 15 votes, while CA gets 55—like in the electoral college!
4. Let’s enforce the Constitution we have, not rewrite it!
5. No one can control the Delegates to an Article V convention.
   Your Letter
   The talking points are at the end of this blast.
   Please write all 50 North Carolina Senators and tell them why they should Vote “No” on HJR 235, HJR 151, and any other applications asking Congress to call a convention under Art. V. In
   your own words, let the Senators know we’re depending upon the Senate to defend our
   Constitution, since the tactics of the House were embarrassingly non-transparent.
   Senate Republicans’ Addresses
   (Copy the addresses below as a block into “BCC,” and copy your own address into the “To” box;
   and place the bill#s and description, e.g. Art. V convention, and perhaps something catchy on the subject line.

Senate Republicans’ Addresses

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Senate Democrats’ Addresses

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],

Dear Senator:

Thank you for defending our Constitution!

“States have no Power to select or Control Delegates to an Article V Convention” shows
that those who promise that State Legislators will select and control the Delegates are not telling the truth! Delegates have the self-evident Right “to alter or to abolish” our existing “Form of Gov’t,” as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, para. 2. So, no one has power over Delegates!

“DANGER: Article V Convention Legislation filed in Congress shows that the assurances of a limited convention, which the lobbyists have been selling to State Legislators for a decade to get their votes, are false. The federal bills suggest that if Congress calls an Article V Convention, the call will NOT be for a limited convention.

The “Brilliant Men” flyer shows that James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, four US Supreme
Court Justices, and other jurists and scholars warned that Delegates to an Article V convention
can’t be controlled.

Myths v. Facts exposes a number of the false assurances made by convention supporters. (You
can copy and paste one myth & fact into a short letter and link the entire flyer, if you wish. Or
write your own letter using information from this flyer or others.)

“Bluffing Their Way to an Art. V Convention, Part 2: The Best PR Money Can Buy,” showcases
the PR war being waged by Mark Meckler, President of Convention of States (COS), which
creates the false impression that Americans are demanding a “convention of states.” The
supposed grassroots momentum (e.g. petitions, polls, name-dropping, etc.) that Meckler
creates with dark money can push Congress into calling a constitutional convention which is
inherently illimitable.

“Dark Money—Not the Grassroots—Is Behind the Convention of States Organizations (COS)”
proves that almost 2/3 of the money driving COS’s effort to apply to Congress for an Article V
Convention, is coming from major donors giving COS $5,000 to $2,000,000 over the latest 3
years of reporting available. Why are multi-millionaires and billionaires trying to get their hands on our Constitution?

“COS adopts Newspeak to sell the Con-Con” debunks the narrative that a convention called
under Article V is a “convention of states,” rather than a “constitutional convention.” COS made up the myth that an A5C is controlled from start to finish by State Legislatures. COS is waging a semantics war.

For Republicans Only:
“An Article V Convention Made Easy” shows why Delegates to an Article V Convention have
the power to throw off the Constitution we have and set up a new one, with a new and easier
mode of ratification.
And Convention of States (COS) board member Robert P. George has co-drafted a new
constitution which grants massive powers to the fed gov’t & imposes gun control with red flag
confiscations!

For Democrats Only:
In “The Risk of the Right-Wing Push to Rewrite the Constitution,” celebrated historian James M. Banner, Jr. raises the alarm about the push, mainly by a few billionaires, to trigger a convention under Article V of the US Constitution:

“…the greatest danger is that there’s nothing in Article V that prevents an amendatory
convention from following the example of the 1787 convention in Philadelphia, which became a runaway convention by simply assuming its freedom to propose a substitute for the very frame of government, the Articles of Confederation, under which it convened…[If] the proponents of an Article V convention succeed in setting one in motion,…“the extraordinary American experiment in the self-government of an open society that has endured for over 230 years will be in never-before-experienced peril.”

Or:

Or you might quote from Chief Justice Warren Burger’s LETTER to Phyllis Schlafly dated June 22, 1988:

“…[T]here is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The
Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda…

After a Convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the Convention if we don’t like its agenda…”