EDITORIAL: The state’s plan to blow up the Constitution

May 13--Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted "BOOM" in celebration when the Legislature made Texas the 11th state to petition Congress for a constitutional convention of the states. "Boom" is right. What Abbott hopes to accomplish would be incendiary.

For years while Abbott was the attorney general and now that he's the governor, the federal government has impeded Texas' authority to suppress voting and women's reproductive rights, discriminate based on sexual preference, pollute itself and neighboring states, and block the working poor from access to health care. Sometimes he was successful in court at thwarting the government's attempts to protect people, often not. Perhaps his most influential victory at the Supreme Court was in blocking the forced expansion of Medicaid and giving individual states the right of refusal. It was arguably the biggest monkey wrench thrown into the gears of Obamacare. And it protected Texas' embarrassing ranking of No. 1 in medically uninsured while tipping the life-and-death struggles of Texas' working poor harder toward death.

But the federal judiciary, Constitution in hand, wouldn't let Texas deny same-sex couples' right to marry, discriminate against registered voters who can't meet the state's overly restrictive photo ID requirements, or use false claims of health and safety to restrict women's right to safe abortions. This constitutional check and balance works like the Founders designed it, but not like Abbott wants it to work -- except of course when five of the nine Supreme Court justices vote his way.

In January, at the start of the legislative session, Abbott declared it a priority to pass a petition for a convention of the states. It was one of only four priorities he declared.

A convention of states would require a petition by at least 34 state legislatures. That's a tall order. But the leading issues -- term limits and a balanced-budget amendment -- are popular. A constitutional convention might not sound like such a bad idea if it stopped there. But a convention, once convened, could go in other directions.

Abbott would like to take a convention in directions we all should be thankful the Founders didn't go. Among his most nuclear ideas are to require a supermajority of the Supreme Court to overturn a state law and allow a two-thirds majority of states to override Supreme Court decisions. These proposals might further Abbott's aim of suppressing all those aforementioned individual rights. But one of our branches of government would lose a significant amount of the authority the Founders gave it. That's too great a cost.

Tyranny is the ironic oft-heard complaint of Abbott and other proponents of a constitutional convention. In their way of thinking, the federal government is oppressive because it limits the states' right to oppress. They see the states as the ultimate authority and the impediments to their authority as the American experiment gone awry. Tyranny by a state against individuals because they're women in their childbearing years, or gay, or too poor to afford one of the forms of ID the state wanted to require of voters, is the American experiment gone awry.

Instead of states' rights, Abbott should have declared individual rights and human rights his legislative priority. Boom, indeed. Put the pin back in the grenade.

___

(c)2017 the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (Corpus Christi, Texas)

Visit the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (Corpus Christi, Texas) at www.caller.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.