A brief thought on the Third Amendment

[solarbird]

Everyone, including me, finds it a brief spark of hilarity that we've actually got a Third Amendment case going on here, right? And it is hilarious.

But here's the thing. The third amendment actually matters. Maybe not as much as the others, but it does.

Why?

Because if you want to bring in a honkin' big chonk of troops to put somebody down the hard way, you need a place to put them. You need a place to stage them, and you need a place to house them.

And if you still want some semblance of legality for greater public consumption - if it isn't just an out-and-out coup - that means you can't just make people take them in. Congress has to approve it. The executive and the military can't do it by themselves. Not legally.

Which means you can't just start quietly stacking up an assload of army on the down-low without also moving the supplies around and also getting permissions and also the approval of Congress, and people are going to notice.

It may not be much of a speedbump on the highway to autocracy, but it's still a speedbump. And right now, I'm grateful for every one of them, no matter how small...

...or hilarious....

...they might be.

Comments

[numb3r_5ev3n]

What has been hilarious for me are all the Proclaimed Conservatives who for years have been all "MUH CONSTITOOTIONAL RIGHTS" who were "Th..third Amendment? What Third Amendment?" when this dropped. ESPECIALLY the ones who were like "YOU CAN'T JUST MAKE TROOPS LEAVE, THAT'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL."

[solarbird]

Yeah, that last bit in particular has been hilarious xD