Citizens United & Amending the Constitution

Campaigning over the weekend in Iowa for the Republican presidential nomination, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio announced his support for a dangerous idea: a national convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution to propose constitutional amendments on term limits and a balanced federal budget.

"Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has cynically reneged on his pledge to restore “regular order” to the Senate.

All but unnoticed by the public and press, balanced budget activists and an assortment of big money interests are close to triggering a political and governmental crisis in the form of a new constitutional convention, Common Cause argues in a report released today. “The Dangerous Path. Big Money’s Plan to Shred the Constitution,” examines a decades-old campaign on behalf of a convention under Article V of the Constitution. The unprecedented assembly could re-write the 238-year old Constitution, imperiling civil rights and the system of checks and balances at the heart of the nation’s charter, the report warns.

In a story in Politico today, money in politics journalist Ken Vogel revealed the Koch brothers’ secretive surveillance and intelligence team that is gathering information on their opponents through technology and on the ground sources.

The 2016 Presidential candidates are talking more and more about the problem of money in politics, but leaving out what every voter needs to know: how they would fix it.

Veteran election lawyer Bob Bauer had some simple but powerful advice Wednesday for about 50 young attorneys who gathered for a meeting of the D.C. Lawyer Chapter of the American Constitution Society.