OKIE Report: Coburn Backing ‘Convention Of States’

Last month, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn spoke directly to questions regarding impeachment proceedings against President Obama. In the story “Coburn: Obama ‘Getting Perilously Close’ to the Standard For Impeachment” the Senator spoke about a Convention of States which could have a major impact, coming directly from the states. Chris Rush at the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise has also covered Sen. Coburn’s remarks, you can read that here. We wanted to look further into the Convention of States, and the group leading this charge, Citizens for Self Governance. Here is some of what we found.  

The Tenth Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Fourth Amendment. And increasingly, the First Amendment.

Once upon a not-so-long ago, these fundamental expressions of Constitutionally-guaranteed freedom were considered untouchable. They were among the most basic expressions of what it meant to be American.

With the fabric of American society undergoing rapid mutations on the atomic level, more than a few concerned Americans have started looking high and low for means by which to preserve the most basic American attributes.

Enter Convention of States.

The brainchild of Citizens for Self Governance (CCG), Convention of States proposes what amounts to a modern-day Constitutional Convention. Basing its advocacy of such a convention on Article V of the United States Constitution which declares in part,

“…on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof…”

“The Founders gave us a legitimate path to save our liberty by using our state governments to impose binding restraints on the federal government,” CCG argues on its website. “We must use the power granted to the states in the Constitution.”

It is an idea that has gained the support of Senator Tom Coburn.

CCG’s idea for the convention is a purely grassroots approach. Adhering to the Constitutional requirements for a two-thirds mandate, their initial goal is to focus on 40 states, and to have a “viable political operation” in at least 3,000 state house districts in those states. “Legislators must know that our grassroots team will have their backs if they support a convention of the states,” CCG says.

CCG calls the convention a matter of choice, providing the federal government with an opportunity to “see the light” before such a convention is convened. CCG considers “seeing the light” as addressing what the organization calls “four major abuses perpetrated by the federal government”: a spending and debt crisis, a regulatory crisis, congressional attack on state sovereignty, and a federal takeover of the decision-making process.

“Washington will never voluntarily relinquish meaningful power,” CCG declares, “no matter who is elected.”