amending the constitution

After that lecture on government I decided to wiki amendments. mainly to learn what the last one was, the twenty-seventh, which I think says that legislators cannot raise their own salaries, which seems reasonable enough.  What is a little peculiar is that it was first proposed in 1790 and didn't become an amendment until 1992.  I wonder what the deal was with that.  I wonder that I have no recollection of it.  I mean a constitutional amendment is a big deal.

Before that there was one changing the voting age to 18 in 1971.  Now this had to be in response to the draft.  I remember hearing all the time about kids complaining that they were old enough to die for their country, yet they couldn't vote.  There was also a lot of talk about being old enough to die for their country but too young to drink beer, but I guess that didn't sound noble enough, and they never got that. 

Clearly one party, probably the dems, expected to get more of the 18 year old votes than the other, so why did the reps let it pass?  Maybe they were afraid of some backlash if they were seen to be blocking it.

There is one in 1965 about presidential succession.  I don't remember that one either.

Then we have a civil rights amendment, one giving DC electors, and then the sorehead amendment in 1951 where the reps limited the prez to two terms.  I wonder if any prez had aspired to more than two terms before FDR.  I think there was a sort of gentleman's agreement that since Washington only took two, that's all anybody else should take.

Then we have prohibition and its repeal sandwiched around the suffragette amendment and one in 32 about the dates of the terms of veeps and prez's.

Then direct election of the prez and the income tax, under Wilson I would guess, and before that the civil war amendments.  You know this is all good stuff, there must be a book on the amendments about how they came about.

Speaking of books, we ought to get that book, one of us could buy it and send it to the other, and along the way try to get in touch with Rev Anderson. 

You don't remember the white backlash against busing with all the bombings and protesting and white people generally making a spectacle of themselves?  How about the stoning of Rev King in Marquette Park?  What about George Wallace?  He was part of the white backlash.  The white backlash was strong Brother. 

There are no laws about enforcing segregation in Chicago, and we don't have those riots when a black person moves into a white neighborhood, but the city is still pretty segregated.  There is the L of the black people covering the south and west sides, the V of the Hispanics going northwest and southwest, and the whites have the north lakeshore and the edges of the western north and south sides.  As for schools, most white kids don't go to public schools, and the schools generally reflect the neighborhoods they are in.  I believe the civil rights movement came first and it was composed of whites and blacks doing peaceful protests and operations, but at some point some black people thought it was going too slow, and fuck a bunch of white people anyway and came up with black power which scared the shit out of whitey, but didn't end up doing the black people much good either.

Well we ought to get the book.