Unlike some other states, it is very difficult to get a voter initiative on the ballot in Mississippi; this year, we have three initiatives that would amend our state constitution, a truly remarkable feat.  All three are key conservative issues in an overwhelmingly conservative state:  abortion, voter identification, and eminent domain abuse.Personally, I’m hoping for a triple play, and voting “YES!” on all three.  The issue that I am working on, however, is abortion.

When this battle is won in Mississippi, it doesn’t just set up a challenge to Roe v. Wade, it eviscerates that case and all of its unholy progeny.  It gives a method by which every state in the nation can extend the most basic civil rights to the most innocent and deserving members of the human race — our unborn children.

When is a person a “person”?

All humans deserve equal protection of the laws and the right to due process, but the law only extends these rights to every “person.”  Thanks to the outstanding work of Personhood Mississippi, we in Mississippi will have the chance to be the first state in the history of our union to define a “person” to include all unborn humans.  Initiative 26 will define the term person as follows:

SECTION 33.  Person defined.  As used in this Article III of the state constitution, “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.

If Mississippians vote Yes on Amendment 26, all human beings would be ensured equal rights in our state and protection under law, regardless of their size, location or developmental stage.  Calling abortion “murder” will no longer be merely a moral judgment, but an established legal determination.  In other words, abortion will be illegal.

Mothers in crisis will be protected from the greedy corporations that kill their unborn children and do immense medical and psychological harm to these mothers while reaping billions of dollars in profits.  As a bonus, human cloning, embryo stem cell research, and other forms of medical cannibalism would be effectively stopped, necessarily focusing the attention of medical researchers on approaches that have been proven to actually work (like adult stem cells) and do not require the killing of an innocent person.  This initiative also stops Obamacare from funding abortions in the state of Mississippi with your tax dollars; after all, anyone performing an abortion will be arrested.

Abortionists are spreading many lies about our initiative, but the truth is that all forms of contraception that merely inhibit the egg from hooking up with a sperm will still be legal and easily obtainable, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) will still be legal and as obtainable as it is now.  (Unfortunately, this also means that the law won’t stop public schools from handing out condoms to your children, but let’s take these things one step at a time.)

Direct democracy vs. judicial tyranny.

As a father, husband, a “person” and most of all a Christian, I am thrilled with the intended result.  As lawyer and a constitution-loving conservative, however, I must confess that I am also enamored with the process that is leading to this result.  First of all, this is a people’s initiative, not a decision by seven old men in black robes playing gods.  Voter initiatives are direct democracy, an expression of the will of the people.  The contrast could not be greater:  the most democratic form of state government rejecting the tyranny of the least democratic branch of our federal government.  This truly is government of the persons, by the persons, and for the persons.

Civil rights:  not just for the born anymore.

More than that, however, the idea behind personhood came from the very court case that has robbed 53 million unborn Americans of their right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  During oral arguments on the infamous Roe v. Wade debacle, there are several times when personhood was discussed, including this chilling exchange:

Justice Potter Stewart: Well, if it were established that an unborn fetus is a person within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment, you would have almost an impossible case here, would you not?

Ms Sarah Weddington: I would have a very difficult case. [Laughter]

Justice Potter Stewart: You certainly would because you’d have the same kind of thing you’d have to say that this would be the equivalent to after the child was born.

Ms Sarah Weddington: That’s right.

Justice Potter Stewart: If the mother thought that it bothered her health having the child around, she could have it killed. Isn’t that correct?

Ms Sarah Weddington: That’s correct.

The Court thus made the point that the abortionists would lose “if it were established that an unborn fetus is a person within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment,” and the abortionists’ attorney agreed.  Why was this such an obvious conclusion?  If you base the right of a mother to kill another “person” solely on “medical privacy” grounds, then a mother could legally kill any person regardless of whether the person’s date of birth is in the future or the past.  If “medical privacy” is the only grounds to consider, and if an individual’s status as a “person” cannot be considered, then a mother could have her newborn or five year old killed out of “medical privacy” concerns.

But, an individual’s status as a “person” is all-important; it is the trump card of all trump cards.  In order to allow abortion at will after “person” is defined to encompass all unborn children, Court would have to find that the right to medical privacy must be so inviolate that it becomes a license to kill other “persons,” who are just as much a “person” as the mother.  Fortunately, every “person” is entitled to due process and equal protection of the laws, and a mother cannot legally kill any “person.”  Thus, when an unborn child is constitutionally considered to be a “person,” said Justice Stewart, “this would be the equivalent to after the child was born.”  In short, an (unborn) person is a (newborn) person is an (adult) person.

There’s a nice video/slideshow here of actual audio excerpts from the oral arguments, so you can hear for yourself the case that was made for the personhood amendment.

It is clear that once the legal definition of “person” includes all unborn children, then they are entitled to equal protection of the laws (such as our laws against homicide in its various forms) and due process.  Their inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can no longer be denied to them by Planned Parenthood. 

After reading the oral argument exchange I quoted above, you may well wonder why the Court ultimately ruled for the abortionists.  In the following exchange, we see how the abortionists (and ultimately the Court) managed to get around the rights of the unborn:

Justice Harry A. Blackmun: Well, do I get from this then that your case depends primarily on the proposition that the fetus has no constitutional rights?

Ms Sarah Weddington: It depends on saying that the woman has a fundament constitutional right and that the state has not proved any compelling interest for regulation in the area.

Notice the sidestep; the abortionists’ lawyer wanted nothing to do with any discussion of the constitutional rights of the unborn.  Instead, she wanted to focus solely on the constitutional privacy rights of the mother, which she could do only because there was no definition of “person” in Texas law or federal constitutional law.

This remains the abortionists’ tactic today.  In public hearings being held throughout Mississippi by our Secretary of State, abortion zealots make all the usual arguments about women’s rights, women’s health, focusing on jobs and socialist utopian healthcare schemes, blah blah blah, but they never utter a single word about the unborn child.  On July 26, I joined many others who spoke on behalf of Initiative 26 in Hattiesburg.  With both logic and passion we discussed the many adverse health and psychological effects on mothers, women’s rights, medical privacy, birth control issues and government intrusion into our lives — we are not monolithic in our arguments by any means.  Yet we, the pro side, were the only ones to discuss the actual wording of the initiative, and we were the only ones to discuss the rights of the unborn.  Indeed, we were the only ones to even mention the unborn.

Folks, now is the time, and Mississippi is the place to have this battle.  I know that everyone has been focused on the interminably long debt ceiling debacle; indeed, I followed that horror show in-depth as well.  Still, it is merely the crisis du jour, and it will pass — there’s nothing more you can do about it, so perhaps you should focus on something that you can help out with.  Our biggest need in this battle is public awareness, and talking about this initiative, writing about this initiative, commenting about this initiative and voting for this initiative will have a tremendous effect.

Every day that we do nothing about the American Holocaust, thousands of innocent children lose their lives, and their mothers are brutalized by the most efficient killing machine since Nazi Germany:  Planned Parenthood.  Besides, if you want to restore America to its former greatness, and make it the world’s greatest defender of freedom and its engine of prosperity, your first goal must be to defeat and utterly destroy liberalism.  This cannot be done without taking the holiest sacrament from the godless religion of Liberalism — abortion.  Defeat abortion, and you defeat liberalism.

We are gathering momentum; Gov. Mike Huckabee will be here on September 8 to speak in support of the personhood initiative, and other speakers are being lined up.  Yard signs are popping up everywhere, a true sign of a grassroots, citizens’ effort.  What the Tea Party accomplished in 2010 was great, but what we’ll accomplish with this initiative will be the single most important piece of civil rights legislation in our country’s history.  So pay attention to this fight; in several very real ways, our future as a nation depends upon it.

Ideally this would be done by amending the state constitution to provide for such recall elections.  But it can be done through statute as well, with the New Jersey Uniform Recall Election Law as a good model.

The greatest opportunity is in the states that already provide for citizen initiatives to put state constitutional amendments or proposed statutes on the state ballot for a vote of the people for adoption.  In these states, the citizens can act directly, without depending on the politicians to adopt a check on their own power.

The right of recall is desirable because it maintains democratic accountability to the people throughout the entire term of elected officials, rather than just at election time.  This is more relevant now because increasingly we see an attitude among elected officials that they know best and the people are ignorant yahoos who should be ignored until they need to be fooled again at election time.  The people need a right of recall to remove officials who display this anti-democratic attitude after they are elected.

We have seen this problem in particular in the health care battle, where Congressional representatives have displayed the attitude that the people are too gullible, confused and misled to understand the issue, and should be ignored by the wise elected officials who know better.  Elected officials have responded to citizens voicing their objections with name calling, labeling them Nazis, racists, and tea baggers.  These officials are still threatening to adopt a thorough government takeover of health care on the idea that the people will never be able to unscramble the mess.  The right of recall is needed to shortcircuit this tactic.

Another increasing problem is candidates who campaign as conservatives to get elected, and then once they get in office they join with the far left to pass their agenda instead.  With the right of recall, voters who feel they were snookered in this way can act to remove their representative once this pattern becomes apparent.  With this power in place, candidates would be less likely to try to get elected on false pretenses in the first place.

The right of recall would also counter the growing problem of voter fraud.  If voters feel there were too many shenanigans in a vote count, and don’t trust the result, they can act to provide for a new election.  A perfect example is the recent extended vote count for Sen. Al Franken in Minnesota, which was based on a developed art form of focusing the recount on districts that heavily favor one party, where votes can be manufactured.  With this success, rest assured that this will be tried again and again.

A recent example of recall in action was the 2003 removal of then recently reelected California Gov. Davis.  The people voted overwhelmingly to remove him from office in a recall election, and replaced him with current Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This example shows that the recall process is practical and not counterproductively disruptive.

But anyone who wants to pursue such a recall, or the process of initiative to adopt recall for their state, should realize from the start that this is a time consuming process requiring the collection of likely millions of signatures on petitions, all in strict compliance with the letter of the law.  You can bet that opponents will be looking for any legal variance to deny the whole effort.  Therefore, the effort needs to be organized from the beginning with sufficient resources and experienced input to be successful.

The Putback amendment is comprehensive and so I did three separate posts on it. It includes a mechanism to allow the rank and file within the legislature to get their bills to the floor. With this amendment, any legislator would need to get 25 legislators to sign off on a discharge petition and that would get any bill onto the floor. Currently, it only goes through the rules committee and the rules committee is manned by the leadership. It also removes so called “shell bills” which are blank bills that filter through the legislature and allow the legislature to write the meat and bones in private and quickly have it voted on.

The amendment also has language that helps with ballot access. It limits challenges to those that are rooted in fraud and/or deception or ineligibility. It also allows for a more transparent and open process for redistricting. (That’s only the beginning of course so please visit the links for a comprehensive analysis of the amendment)

Over the last month or so, another amendment has been introduced to the public to compete with the Putback amendment. It’s called the Fair Map amendment. The first major difference is that this amendment only deals with the question of redistricting. Currently, the way the law is structured is this: First, a bill has to come out of both chambers and survive a gubernatorial veto. In each time, the Democrats controlled one and the Republicans the other, so that’s never happened. Next, the leadership each pick four people from each party. Then, five of those eight have to agree on a map. Of course, if there’s 4 partisan Republicans and four partisan Democrats on said committee, the chances are slim that any such agreement will be formed. In fact, it’s never happened. The third step is to pick either Democrat or Republican out of a hat (Lincoln’s hat, by the way) and have their map enacted.

The Illinois Fair Map amendment changes this process slightly. The leadership would still have to pick four people, but now they can’t be legislators, staff, lobbyists, etc. Furthermore, the committe must choose a ninth person up front. The map must be drawn based on specific criterion, something the Putback amendment also requires, so that partisanship is eliminated.

According to Bambenek, the first problem here is that this amendment wouldn’t pass constitutional muster. Any amendment to the State of Illinois’ constitution must contain two different things: a structural change and a procedural change. In the Putback amendment, a structural change is that the bicameral legislature becomes unicameral. A procedural change is that now a legislator can bring their bill to the floor with 25 votes in a discharge petition.

The Illinois Fair Map amendment only has a procedural change. There is no structural change. So, according to Bambenek, this won’t survive constitutional muster. Yet, the Fair Map amendment, only a month old, is the one receiving all the attention. The Chicago Sun Times has already given it their seal of approval.

Illinois voters, prep your John Hancocks. Citizen petitions began circulating Thursday to fix the perverse way Illinois draws its state legislative districts — a way that stacks the deck in elections in favor of incumbents.

Don’t be shy about signing on the dotted line.

The goal is 500,000 signatures by April, enough to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot asking voters if they want to strip from legislators the power to draw legislative districts and give that power to an independent, bipartisan commission. Nine other states already do it this way.

The  Tribune is probably not far behind. What has the Sun Times said about the Putback amendment? Nothing and ditto for the Tribune. In fact, there’s been scant reporting of the Putback amendment in any of the Chicago media. Bambenek held a press conference in Chicago’s posh Union League Club and the only member of the Chicago media to show was the local Fox affiliate and they didn’t even use the footage in a broadcast.

That almost certainly has everything to do with who’s backing each of the two amendments. The Fair Map amendment is backed by Tom Cross, Illinois House Republican leader, and it’s being helped by the powerful and respected New York law firm, the Brennan Group. That gives the Fair Map amendment credibility the Putback amendment doesn’t have. After all, John Bambenek, the leader of the Putback amendment, is a relative political unknown.

In fact, in the establishment, the issue of constitutionality is dismissed. After all, a respected law firm like the Brennan Group would never get something like that wrong. So, it appears that the Putback V Fair Map amendment will wind up much like everything else here in Illinois politically, the establishment versus the outsiders.

By its design, the legislature in Springfield consolidates all power in the hands of four people: Tom Cross, Christine Radogno, Mike Madigan and John Cullerton. Those are the Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. Power is consolidated through the process by which bills see the light of day. In the Illinois legislature, there’s only one way for a bill to be heard and debated: the rules committee. Not surprisingly, each of those four folks are head of the rules committee for their side in the House and Senate. As such, the head of the two rules committees have carte blanche over what bills will and won’t see the light of day. So, if any legislator wants their bill to get a hearing in the House, Michael Madigan must approve. You can see how such a process could corrupt, and does.

Second, there’s absolutely no transparency. At the beginning of each legislative session, the legislature is allowed to pass any number of “shell bills.” These are bills that literally are blank, or shells. Then, when leadership, Madigan et al, feel it’s time for that bill to become law, they go into a backroom somewhere, negotiate, and come out with a full bill. They wait no more than 24 hours and force a vote. Even if a legislator wanted to read the bill, they wouldn’t have time. So, bills become law and then media scrutinizes them and leaks all sorts of embarrassing details, only by then it’s still law. We’re seeing a similar process playing out in the current national health care legislative process.

This process played out to a “T” in the campaign finance reform legislation. After Blago’s indictment, public pressure was so extreme that Madigan et al’s hands were forced. They brought a campaign finance reform bill to the floor. Then, at the last minute, they went into a back room, cut a weak compromise, and took a watered down version to the floor. This should have come to no one’s surprise. The four people in charge are the main beneficiaries of the current campaign finance structure and they are the ones in charge of “reforming it”.

This process also played out in Emil Jones’ last term. (he was head of the Senate until this latest term) He was allied with Blago. Meanwhile, Madigan opposed Blago. As such, legislation literally came to a halt. All Blago proposed bills were killed in the House and all Blago opposed bills were killed in the Senate. So, nothing got done.

The problem of course was that the power struggles of three pols played out for the entire legislature. That’s because the power of the legislature is centered in only four people.

So, what’s the solution? Illinois activis, John Bambenek, has proposed the Putback Amendment. Here’s what the amendment would do. First, it would create a unicamarel legislature. Each district would be represented by three Representatives. There would still be primaries but a minimum of two candidates would come out for each party. Second, it would impose a term limit of four terms. Each term would last two years. It also eliminates the “shell bill” process and forces only texted bills to the floor. Beyond this, it would create a discharge petition process. If leadership refuses to give a bill a proper viewing, the sponsor can get 25 of 177 legislators to sign a discharge petition and this would force said bill to the floor. Finally, it would create a mandatory seven day period between when a final bill is finalized and voted upon. That way the public would have time to digest it and embarrassing details would come out before it passed not after.

Currently, Bambenek is collecting signatures. He needs 500,000 by May to get the amendment on the ballot in November. If it’s on the ballot, it would either need 50.1% of all the voters or 60% of those that vote on the amendment. Typically, far fewer people vote on amendments than vote in total.

Citizens can in fact add amendments to the Illinois constitution as long as they are “structural and/or procedural” in nature. Because that’s a vague description, all potential amendments wind up in front of the Illinois Supreme Court. In fact, only six such amendments have been attempted in history and five have been ruled unconstitutional and never passed that stage.

Beyond having its constitutionality challenged, Bambenek expects the validity of each and every signature challenged. There are 102 counties and 110 voting jurisdictions in Illinois. As such, the amendment could be challenged in the Illinois Supreme Court and in 110 separate election jurisdictions all simultaneously. If it happens to pass, but passes in a close vote, you can also bet that a vote recount will be requested. All of this will have to adjudicated as well.

The Illinois political machine is the one to challenge this amendment and it will be the machine and its lawyers that will challenge each and every phase of the amendment though Bambenek tells me he’s prepared for each and every litigation phase.

Here’s the full text of the bill.