If you've heard Kris Anne Hall's arguments against a Convention of States, you'll want to read this article by author and constitutional scholar Robert Berry. The following is an excerpt--you can read the whole article here.
Thanks to [Mark] Levin, ConventionofStates.com, and Lawrence Lessig’s CallaConvention.org, the effort to get state legislatures to demand the first ever amendments convention seems to be hitting its stride.
But the movement is not without its critics.
Enter constitutional speaker KrisAnne Hall, who would prefer that states engage in out-and-out nullification of unconstitutional federal overreaches. Though less clear constitutionally, the idea has precedent and is also advocated by the Tenth Amendment Center. But unlike the Tenth Amendment Center, Ms. Hall has decided that an Article V amendments convention competes with nullification, and has taken the position that an amendments convention is a road to disaster because she has discovered a clandestine plot by Congress to take over the amendments convention process from start to finish.
In a novel approach, Ms. Hall does not begin with the discredited conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, hyping fears of a so-called “runaway convention.” Instead, she advises her listeners in a 5-part podcast series to ignore the siren call of Article V, suggesting that Congress has shown their hand in an obscure report by the little-known Congressional Research Service. She then inverts the relationship of the CRS to Congress, maintaining that rather than reporting to Congress, the CRS instead publishes the definitive policy of Congress:
"If you know anything about politics … the CRS issues the opinions that Congress is willing to die for."
This would surely come as a surprise to the CRS, as would some of the pronouncements that Ms. Hall attributes to the 32-page report with few specific citations.
Read the full article here.
