In 1982, after an undergraduate research paper written by Gregory Watson, then a student at the University of Texas in Austin, became the foundation for a movement to curtail political corruption by ratifying the amendment, efforts picked up steam.
Cheryl Jacques, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the main groups fighting for gay marriage, said the group plans to argue in advertising campaigns in Ohio and other swing states that the Bush campaign and its allies are orchestrating the marriage amendment efforts in order to distract voters from other issues.
For more on amendment efforts, look here and here.
May it be noted, his 2006 Voting Rights Act amendment efforts failed.
Anyone who lived through the 1980s and 1990s will remember how influential constitutional amendment efforts were to ban flag burning, to balance the budget, to ban gay marriage, and to guarantee equal rights for women.
(Last year, the Times reported that twenty-eight states had already adopted resolutions calling for a constitutional convention on a balanced-budget amendment, an effort supported by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is funded by the Koch brothers, among others).
Just as an assault weapon ban is the slippery slope for Second Amendment advocates, efforts to restrict violent images — or pornography, for that matter — is the slippery slope for First Amendment absolutists.
The amendment, an apparent effort to foil Texas legislators' efforts to push sales of the Huey to Colombia, failed, but the Black Hawks, which had been written out of Plan Colombia, went back into the final package".
Angry Republicans fought back, using procedural moves, politically charged amendments and efforts to embarrass the speaker through tactics like highlighting her request for a larger airplane than her predecessor used for public trips.
Does Boehner support the efforts to have the 14th amendment amended?
