The Tea party's fixation with calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, the one that allows people, not state legislatures, to elect senators continues to attract attention, largely negative. And as noted by nytimes.com columnist Timothy Egan, it is not the only amendment that some Tea Partiers are gunning for.
Egan notes:
Gutting the 17th Amendment is not the only object of this constitutional wrecking crew. Rand Paul, the Republican Senate nominee from Kentucky, recently attacked the 14th Amendment. That's the one that called for full citizenship rights for ex-slaves, and contains a pair of very muscular clauses on equal protection and due process.
Paul and some of the anti-immigration activists behind the show-me-your-papers law in Arizona don't have much use for the first sentence of the 14th Amendment. This one: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.'
The amendment was part of the post-Civil War push to give blacks full standing - the 13th Amendment formally abolished slavery; the 14th got rid of the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which held that even a freed slave could not be a citizen.
Egan also writes that some polls have shown majority-backing for repeal of these amendments. But, the columnist concludes, "Poll-testing the Bill of Rights in a troubled time is always risky proposition. In 2010, the Fourth Amendment - protection against unreasonable search and seizure - probably would not fare very well."
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