Epic Fail! Constitutional Amendments That Didn't Make the Grade [TEASER]

6m

It's basically impossible to amend our crummy Constitution, as demonstrated by the litany of proposed amendments that have face planted directly into the dustbin of history. 


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Transcript

Now the Equal Rights Amendment will positively make women subject to the draft on an equal basis with the men.

They want to legislate away any differences between men and women, which will mean goodbye Girl Scouts and Hello Unisex bathrooms.

Hey everyone, this is Leon from Fiasco and Prologue Projects.

On this episode of 5-4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about failed constitutional amendments.

At the founding, the authors of the Constitution outlined a way to amend the document, and that process worked 27 times.

But since the founding, there have been six amendments that did not make the grade, including one to regulate child labor, one to make Washington, D.C.

a state, and one to confer equal rights to men and women.

The founders intended for the Constitution to evolve, but the process they designed does not function in our fractious political climate.

The result is a constitutional order frozen in time.

This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have set our civil rights ablaze like Satan setting Henry Kissinger's soul on fire.

Bye.

Bye, loser, you fucking evil Cretan, ugly ghoul piece of shit.

Bye.

Rotten piss, Bozo.

I hope it fucking hurts how hot it is down there.

Yeah, I'm here with Rhiannon.

Hey.

Hi.

Hello.

And Michael.

Hey, everybody.

We're going to be way late to this by the time

this episode comes out.

But at the time of recording, it's still fresh.

Just a couple days past.

Henry Kissinger.

Biting it.

Dead as shit.

Finally.

Yeah.

As dead as anyone has ever been.

Maximum dead.

100% in hell.

Even if there isn't a hell, even if like one of the religions that doesn't believe in a hell is the correct one, I believe that hell will be created and

Henry Kissinger will be sent there.

Yeah.

Little exception to the rule, you know?

I posted about this, but how fucking crazy is it to think that the majority of the global population is glad you're dead?

Yeah.

Like most people on the planet, happy that you're in the ground.

Yeah.

Anybody who's heard of you, more likely than not, happy you're dead.

Right.

Yeah.

Pretty remarkable stuff.

Yeah.

Pretty remarkable stuff.

The closest we're going to get to this is whenever Trump or Biden dies and you get like half the country celebrating, right?

Which is a lot, even though it's not as much as I think Kissinger.

There's like a global alliance.

of normal human beings who hate that.

I bought a really nice bottle of champagne when Trump got COVID, just in anticipation that he might die.

And I started making a playlist, like a celebratory playlist.

I wanted to be ready.

I wanted to be ready.

I cracked a bottle of pretty nice champagne the other night.

Yeah, because it did not.

It's amazing.

I called my parents to tell them the news that he was dead.

And like my dad's first reaction was, your granddad would have been so happy.

Yeah.

Three generations celebrating, right?

Like

it's very interesting because I did see occasionally someone online being like, you know, normal people don't celebrate when someone dies, no matter who it is.

But then I was like, texting my mom, who's like the most normal woman on earth, you know, has none of this sort of like hyper-cynical wishing death upon political enemies thing that we all do.

Right.

Right.

I was like, Kissinger died.

And she was like, he was loathed in our household growing up.

The consensus on this is incredible.

No political issue unites us like this.

No, a great moment.

A great moment for all of society.

Yeah.

So today, big strong pivot here, we are talking about failed constitutional amendments.

As longtime listeners know, our Constitution sucks.

As a result, you might want to amend it from time to time.

And there is a process for that.

First, two-thirds of each House of Congress must pass the amendment.

Then, it goes to the states, and three-quarters of the state legislatures must pass it.

There's also a way for the process to start with the states, where two-thirds of state legislatures agree to call for a constitutional convention, but that has never happened.

So put that in your back pocket for now.

Now, the first 10 amendments, of course, ratified in 1791, just after the country's founding, those are the Bill of Rights, you know, the amendments we all know and and love.

You got your first amendment for talking, your second for shooting, so on and so forth.

Near and dear.

Now there are 27.

The most recent was ratified in 1992.

Every year there are dozens, if not hundreds of amendments, perhaps even thousands, proposed in both Congress and at the state level.

Throughout all of our history, only six amendments have been approved by Congress and then not ratified by the states.

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Thanks.