(also at DailyKos)
LoganFerree at FreedomDemocrats recently pondered this question, proposed as a hypothetical confirmation question for John Roberts:
You’re on a lifeboat, but it can only hold 8 of the original 10 amendments without sinking, killing your whole family. Which ones go?
He suggests the 3rd as a fairly obvious first choice, and I tend to agree. It’s a bit tougher to choose from the remaining nine. More below…
From where I stand, the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th are non-negotiable. The remaining ones could easily stand rewriting at a minimum, and so have more leeway for discussion. The 10th should have more language clarifying just which powers the states can hold vs. the people as individuals. The 2nd has a context (the “well regulated militia” bit) that makes it much less clear than would be ideal. The 8th has a good spirit, and covers a critical aspect of government force, but also has frustratingly vague language that makes it difficult to enforce. And the 7th contains a dollar figure that hasn’t been adjusted for 200+ years of inflation (conceivably a good thing, but still…).
Although I don’t want to give up any of them even as written, if push came to shove, it’d probably be the 7th, in part because of that strange dollar limit. Its justification is unclear to me, and if it were rewritten today, the figure would be something like $1000.
So, what do you think? Realizing that none of them are really disposable, which of the remaining 9 amendments is easiest to argue against?