Amendment XXV.
SECTION 1
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
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The motions to move on what become 25A began almost immediately after President Kennedy's head exploded due to gun shots from the grassy knoll, the book depository, the car behind, the car in front, and because of the CIA, the FBI, the Mob, the Mafia, a Mad Man, and his own security detail. Every conspiracy theory is true at the same time; President Kennedy was shot over 9000 times.
25A S1 is completely redundant as the text of Art II, S1 already provided that the office should devolve on the Vice President in the case of Removal, Death, Resignation, or Inability of the President. Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President while on an aeroplane as per the existing legislation and so I have literally no idea why the Republican opposition thought it necessary to change it; much less have an amendment passed with words to exactly the same effect as what already existed.
SECTION 2
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
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Although, Art II, S1 already provided that the President "shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States," in the 176 years which followed, even though literally every SCOTUS assumed and upheld that office of the Vice President fell under the realm of Art II, S1, the Republican opposition thought it necessary to have an amendment passed to clarify what was already in existence.
The utter stupidity of this is that Kennedy was the fourth President to be assassinated and the eighth President to die in office; so it's not like the Vice President assuming the office of the President, as the original 1789 text had assumed, was a novel idea.
SECTION 3
Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
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Again, I have no idea why this ever needed to be said. 25A is magnificent in its glorious redundancy.
SECTION 4
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
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Imaginations of machinations of things that never existed but could do, led people to arrive at the edge case of an edge case that the Vice President could invent reasons and grounds that the President should be removed from office; likely in the grounds of insanity, or disability, or other infirmity. Remember, this generation of politicians probably had lingering memories of the fears that they had had while Roosevelt was President (he did eventually die in office), or of of the fears that they had had while Eisenhower was President (because of periods of sickness and where it was generally assumed that Nixon would run the administration). Now that Kennedy had died, those fears ran rampant and legislators chased at shadows.
What's really crazy about 25A and especially 25A S4, is that if there was going to be a conspiracy to remove the President on the grounds of some invented insanity, or disability, or other infirmity, then it specifies in writing what the terms of that conspiracy are. In other words "we don't care that there is a conspiracy, just as long as it is a legally compliant one".
Without 25A, if such a conspiracy to remove the President existed, then a reasonable challenge which would have likely been drawn up by the Congress would have been passed to SCOTUS for them to make a ruling. As it is, 25A imagines the edge case of an edge case and it is so magnificent in its glorious ridiculousness that the imagined reasons which prompted its passage are unlikely to ever occur.
And here's the problem, precisely because 25A specifies the terms of the process to remove the President, it has given rise to imaginations to do so upon its grounds.
During the second term of Reagan, there were increasing fears about his mental capacity; which would turn out to be proven much much later when it was revealed that he eventually would suffer from Alzheimer's Disease. Likewise during the term of Trump, 25A was brought up again as a suggestion that he should be removed on the grounds of insanity. Likewise during the term of Biden, there have been repeated calls for his removal from office due to mental incapacitation. When he announced that he would not be pursuing a second term and Vice President Kamala Harris would be running for President, there were calls almost immediately in the right-wing trashmedia for Biden to be removed in the grounds of 25A.
Now that Mr Trump has been elected as the 47th President, he will in fact be marginally older than Joe Biden when he was elected as President. Depending on Mr Trump's how mental faculties progess over the next four years, 25A could very well be up for discussion again.
Amendment XXVI.
SECTION 1
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
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There are three really insane points of note with 26A.
One: 26A was passed during the Vietnam War; which meant that there were young men who had been conscripted into the army to fight a war on foreign soil, and still did not have the right to vote. Think about that for a second. The United States can and did force people to carry a gun and fight people in foreign lands, and at the same time did not trust them enough to give them the right to buy cigarettes, buy alcohol, or have the right to vote to object to it. Surely this is a leftover of the strange Puritanical bent which founded the colonies on the east coast in the 1620's; where Puritans hated fun but lived the idea of persecuting people who didn't conform to their ways.
Two: 26A amended 14A S2. This is an amendment to an amendment. How bad was the original legislation that it had two be amended twice? Very.
Three: Even though 26A is an amendment to an amendment, it still doesn't explicitly confer the right to vote on the American People. The latest battleground to deny the franchise to Americans, for no other reason than outright knavery, is over Voter ID laws. Since the United States abjectly refuses to grant the right to vote as an explicit right, this nutwittery is going to keep on happening again and again and again.
SECTION 2
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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Every time I see this, I want to bang my head on a coffee table and pass out. Seriously. What the unholy jinkies is wrong with you?
Amendment XXVII.
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.
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In principle, 27A should have been obvious. There is a very real present and dangerous conflict of interest that places those in charge of the purse strings of the nation, with the right to alter how much the purse of the nation pays them in remuneration. Of course politicians who have access, shouldn't be given unfettered grant to stick both hands into the cookie jar.
Here's the weird thing, it was obvious. The very real present and dangerous conflict of interest was so obvious that 27A was originally proposed on 25th Sep 1789. It wasn't ratified until the 7th of May, 1992. With 203 years having passed from proposal to ratification, that does at least give hope to the Equal Rights Amendment which has been sitting in limbo since 1923.
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