4 amendments I'd like to see -- Editor's Notebook

Over the last four weeks I've taken a look at the Bill of Rights, and how well it has stood the test of time.

But the Constitution doesn't simply lay out the rights of citizens, it also addresses the organization and structure of our government, and places limits on the powers of that government (limits I might add that the Bush administration has tended to ignore whenever it has been inconvenient).

Over the years, including the Bill of Rights, the Constitution has been amended 27 times.

Most of the amendments have been "housekeeping" measures, designed to modify the structure and limits of the government (such as limiting a president to two elected terms of office, or having senators be elected by the people, not appointed by governors).

Some have expanded the rights of Americans, such as the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which essentially ended slavery and declared all Americans have equal rights under the law, and the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

One Amendment, the 18th (Prohibition), was later repealed by the 21st Amendment, leaving us effectively 25 amendments in force.

Not bad for a document that's served a quarter of a millennium. In fact, anyone who's ever tried to write the bylaws for a new club has probably a much better appreciation for the enormously complicated task the Founding Fathers so successfully accomplished.

That doesn't mean there haven't been other proposals to amend the Constitution. There are literally dozens of proposals out there, many in the form of memorials by states to Congress, suggesting other amendments.

There are four I would like to see.

First, I'd like to give the president the ability to have a line-item veto over budget bills. Potentially, this could eliminate quite a bit of "pork" in the huge omnibus spending bills put together by Congress. A lot of things get slipped into those bills that just waste taxpayer money, but because so much of those bills are items really needed to run the government, congressmen usually wind up voting for the entire package. As part of this amendment, I would suggest that any line item vetoed by the president could be overridden by a simple majority (not a formal, two-thirds majority as is normally required) of both houses. That way, if an item really was wanted by Congress, it could still be approved using normal standards, but at least the public would see who voted for it.

Second, in a related amendment, I would like to see an amendment that would require that any attachment, rider or amendment to any law presented in final form before the respective houses of Congress, be germane to the scope and intent of the law to which it is attached. That would prevent adding some rider that has nothing to do with a critical piece of legislation from being approved simply because the bill to which it is attached is something Congress has to pass (for example, putting a rider approving or banning stem cell research onto the defense spending bill). This is a trick that's been horribly abused by Congress over the years and needs to be ended.

Third, an amendment clearly defining executive privilege. Executive privilege, designed to allow the free flow of debate within an administration, and to provide for non-disclosure of issues involving national security -- all valid reasons, has, all too often in recent years, been invoked solely to obstruct criminal investigations. I would propose an amendment that would ensure that executive privilege may not be invoked by any member of the administration, or Congress, when the information being sought is determined by a court of law to be germane and necessary to a felony criminal investigation.

And finally, I'd like to see an amendment that would restrict the president's authority, under Article 2, Section 2, of the Constitution, to grant pardons or commutations of sentences. This also, has been abused many times over the years, most recently with "Scooter" (or should we say "Skater") Libby. It's come to amount to a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone in an administration who breaks the law. I would suggest that the Senate be allowed ten days to veto (with a full two-thirds majority) any pardon issued by a president.

Most of these are housekeeping issues that would work toward ending some of the major abuses currently common in the government.

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There are times I wouldn't mind an amendment outlawing high technology. Last week, as we concluded our look at the Bill of Rights, somewhere, in one of the other computers used to put the paper out after it leaves my computer, some sections of the text of the Bill of Rights got turned into computer gibberish. We actually had some requests that those sections be reprinted. After all, it's hard to evaluate what's being said about an amendment if you don't know what the amendment itself said. So, here's a quick reprint of the last half of the column affected by the gremlins in the machines:

Amendment 8 -- Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

This amendment is actually, a little vague, and as a result its interpretation over the years has changed as society has changed. At one time, for example, hanging someone who committed murder was considered normal and appropriate. Today, it's considered cruel. There's a lot of people who think we're too soft on vicious killers these days, and maybe we are, but no matter how you execute them, they're still dead.

The current interpretation clearly reflects the "gentler" society we have today, and it's probably a good idea to keep the government from being too vicious in determining its punishments (no matter how appropriate they might be). Governments, after all, have a tendency to push toward the authoritarian side, something the Constitution is designed primarily to prevent.

In lesser cases, this amendment is often challenged when judges get a little too "creative" in trying to find punishments that fit the crime.

Throughout U.S. history, the courts have tended to err on the liberal side of how this amendment is interpreted, but overall, this amendment is alive and kicking -- thank God.

Amendment 9 -- Construction of Constitution.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

This is one of the more interesting amendments in the entire Bill of Rights. In effect, it says that the rights of Americans are open ended, not restricted solely to those contained in the Constitution. It's under this provision, for example, that privacy rights are often derived.

This is one of the best amendments, in my opinion, in the entire Constitution, because it allows for adjustments in society and provides a foundation for the development and exploration of additional "rights." It says that the people are more important than the government when it comes down to defining what liberties we really enjoy.

It can be subject to significant interpretation, often with the changing winds of society, but it was a brilliant addition to the Constitution by the founding fathers, and if anything, has grown in strength and stature over the years.

Amendment 10 -- Powers of the States and People.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

There are two parts to this amendment. The second part, like the Ninth Amendment, provides for additional rights for the people.

The first part provides, however, for the rights of states, and this amendment is usually known as the "state's rights" amendment.

At the time the Constitution was ratified in 1791, state's rights were extremely important. For at least the first half century of our Republic, the states had far more power than the central government, and being a citizen of a state was often considered more important than being a citizen of the nation. Arising from well before the Revolution, the individual states had been the basic unit of political organization in this country and were expected to remain dominant.

But the Civil War and Reconstruction drove a stake through the heart of the state's rights part of this amendment. Slavery may have been the "hot button" issue, but the underlying argument involved state's rights. The Union victory was a serious defeat for this amendment.

When FDR managed to push through a bunch of Hoover administration proposals the Tenth was officially buried, and LBJ put the gravestone monument up with his "Great Society" programs.

When state's wouldn't (or couldn't, due to finances) respond to solve problems or "redress grievances," (such as social security, minimum wage and work condition laws, as well as the Jim Crow segregation laws) Americans turned to the more powerful federal government to solve the problems.

Governments never give up a power they've been given, and Americans had not only asked for, but demanded that it take more and more responsibility, and therefore more power.

So Congress, using primarily the "power of the purse," constantly forces its way around this amendment today by threatening to withhold critical federal funds from states that don't comply with legislation that probably would have been considered blatantly unconstitutional 150 years ago.

Times change, and so has the interpretation of the Constitution, by both the courts and society.

As a result, today, the Tenth Amendment's state's rights provision might as well not exist.

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So, overall, as we've seen in the last few weeks, the Bill of Rights still remains fundamental to our concept of American rights and government, but don't ever kid yourself that some of those rights haven't either disappeared, been ignored, or are otherwise in serious jeopardy today.

The fact than any have survived is due solely to the vigilance of Americans who stand on those rights, and who fight for them. For example, no matter how much the ACLU may get in our craw sometimes, it clearly is a group that is willing to battle for our rights even when the circumstances around which those rights are invoked is unpopular or distasteful.

The Bill of Rights has been chipped away at over the years, because Americans have been too complacent, too concerned with personal security and success, to stand up and fight for the security and supremacy of the document that protects them from the boots of bureaucracy and the always present tendency of governments to seek more and more authoritarian control.

The Bill of Rights gives us a form of liberty envied by most of the world and unprecedented in the planet's history.

Our founding fathers fought for these rights with "their lives, fortunes and sacred honor." We owe them no less than to do so as well, and as passionately, for ourselves and our posterity.

But to stay free, we must stay vigilant.