Following up on a post from Friday, I enjoyed an LA Times editorial over the weekend, responding to the latest effort to revive a constitutional amendment on flag burning. The paper pointed to a smart lawmaker with a terrific idea.
Sen. Dick Durbin has the right idea. By March, the Illinois Democrat and his colleagues on the Senate’s constitution, civil rights and property rights subcommittee were considering this session’s fourth proposal to amend the Constitution. Enough, said Durbin, who declared that a better idea would be to bar constitutional amendments during an election year.
Now this is a brilliant idea. We should call it the “Durbin Rule.” It’s not a real proposal, mind you, but rather just an aside Durbin offered to make a point. But that’s irrelevant; we should pursue this anyway.
There are too many proposals for constitutional amendments and this would help limit votes on the darn things. With the election coming up, lawmakers (particularly in the GOP) are rushing to push “culture war” votes on all manner of nonsense they’d like to see written into constitutional stone. In most instances, there are just enough elected officials to stop these schemes from progressing, but there are too many close calls.
This won’t happen, but Durbin’s suggestion would sure be helpful.