Politics

Tea Party group to convene conference… at Harvard

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
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You probably don’t see many tea partiers in the hallways at Harvard Law.

But that will change next month when Tea Party Patriots, an umbrella organization of local tea party groups, holds a conference there with legal experts to talk about different ways the U.S. Constitution could be amended.

The group plans to discuss this topic on Sept. 24 and 25 — specifically how feasible it would be to hold a constitutional convention. The event will include experts who will discuss “their interpretations of Article V, their understanding of how the Founders viewed the provision and how a Constitutional Convention would operate today,” according to a release.

“The Founders included the Amendment process for the states to resist federal overreach and a convention would give states the chance to exert their authority and overturn unconstitutional laws,” said Mark Meckler, a national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, who said the group isn’t yet supporting the idea of a convention, but is merely interested in exploring it. (29 percent of voters say tea partiers are terrorists)

“It is an idea that deserves reasoned discussion without the partisan or ideological underpinnings,” he said.

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig said, “From the Tea Party Right to the Progressive Left, there is agreement that something fundamental has gone wrong,”

“The solution to that disagreement is democracy,” Lessig said. “We should begin the long discussion about how best to reform our democracy, to restore its commitment to liberty and a Republic, by beginning a process to amend the Constitution through the one path the Framers gave us that has not yet been taken — a Convention.”