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It takes about 15 minutes to read the U.S. Constitution. Then there's our state constitution, which runs to more than 68,000 words -- longer than the typical paperback novel, and a good deal harder to follow.
At last report, our state senate was considering a proposal to make it more difficult to amend our state constitution. As it is, an amendment passes with 50 percent, plus one vote. This would be changed to 60 percent.
The current requirement for a constitutional amendment is the same as for an initiated law. So if you're hiring people to circulate petitions for your pet cause, why bother with an initiated law, which the legislature can amend or repeal, when with the same effort you can put your measure beyond the reach of the General Assembly by making it part of the state constitution?
So it's easy to see why our constitution has become so cluttered, and making it more difficult to amend makes sense. The general charter of our state government ought to concern itself with organization, responsibilities and limitations, not with rules about hog farming and fur trapping.
One sweetener with the current proposal is that initiated laws passed by the voters would be difficult for the legislature to change. For the first five years, a two-thirds majority in each house would be required, rather than a simple majority. So laws initiated and approved by the public at large could be changed, but not casually.
That's a reasonable compromise. Whatever its other flaws, the legislature does have to hold hearings, consider how measures fit with the rest of state government and look for potential problems. When Amendment 41 passed last year, I suspect that even its most fervent supporters did not want to prohibit the children of state employees from accepting college scholarships.
It would make even more sense, though, to start over with a new state constitution. Colorado's 1876 charter was based on the constitution of Illinois -- and Illinois adopted a new constitution in 1970. Our neighbors in Montana adopted a new state constitution in 1972.
In other words, it's not impossible to assemble a convention and write a new one. It would even honor the wishes of one of Colorado's founding fathers. Casimiro Barela of Trinidad was one of the 39 men who wrote our 1876 constitution. He then served for many years in the state senate.
In 1911, almost a century and dozens of amendments ago,
he wrote that The Constitution of the State of Colorado
has become cumbersome and difficult to manage.... [It] has
become a codex so large in volume, so imprecise in its
scope, that it is as a body of statutory decrees.... A
constitutional convention will no doubt be costly, but
think of the enormous cost that results from the habit of
amending a constitution every two years.
On the other hand, why bother? Article 15, Section 5
forbids the consolidation of parallel or competing
railroads, which happened anyway in 1996 -- with the
support of the governor, no less.
And there's Article 11, Section 2, which forbids public support of private corporations -- a provision that is routinely violated by every economic-development entity in Colorado. Or we could consider water conservancy districts, organized under the judicial branch but exercising the legislative powers like setting property tax levies, and thus violating the separation of powers ordained in Article 3.
In other words, it doesn't really matter what we do about our state constitution, because nobody pays much attention to it anyway.
One More Memorial?
Published 1 May 2007 in the Denver Post.
The Sand Creek Massacre National Historical Site, about 20 miles northeast of Eads in Kiowa County, was duly dedicated last week.
The massacre began on Nov. 29, 1864. The Colorado Militia, commanded by Col. John M. Chivington, attacked an encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho, mostly women, children and old men who believed they were under federal protection. Chivington's soldiers battered, shot and stabbed unarmed women, children and babes in arms. They carried off body parts as souvenirs.
Before Sand Creek, Chivington was a Colorado hero. In the spring of 1862, a Confederate army from Texas invaded New Mexico with an eye on Colorado's gold. The Texans met New Mexico and Colorado volunteers at Glorieta Pass east of Santa Fe. Chivington led his contingent around the battle line and destroyed the Texans' supply train. The battle was a draw, but without supplies in hostile territory, the Confederates had to retreat to El Paso. The invasion was thwarted, thanks to Chivington.
Then came Sand Creek, where Chivington commanded the Third Colorado Regiment, which was supposed to serve for 100 days to protect pioneer Denver from the Plains Indians. Mixed bands of Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne warriors had attacked isolated farms and ranches, as well as travelers and wagon trains. Denver had no mail from the East for more than a month in the summer of 1864.
But the Indians at Sand Creek were not the Indians who had been raiding. Those at Sand Creek had gone to where peaceful Indians were supposed to go in the fall of 1864.
When Chivington's regiment returned to Denver on Dec.
22, the Rocky Mountain News reported that All acquitted
themselves well, and Colorado soldiers once again covered
themselves with glory.
The revulsion against Chivington is not some modern
outbreak of political correctness. Just two months after
the massacre, Private Romine H. Ostrander of the First
Colorado wrote in his diary that I have pretty spirited
arguments with these third reg't ducks sometimes about the
barbarity of indiscriminately murdering defenseless women
and children of the Indians at sand creek.
Maj. Ned Wynkoop called Chivington an inhuman
monster.
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant said I have heard of
Sand Creek, and I can but regard that as a
massacre.
A congressional investigating committee in 1865
concluded that It is difficult to believe that beings in
the form of men, and disgracing the uniform of United
States soldiers and officers, could commit or countenance
the commission of such acts of cruelty and
barbarity.
All this should be remembered, as well as one 26-year-old Capt. Silas Stillman Soule of the First Colorado. He came to Colorado from Kansas to seek gold in 1859, and enlisted in 1861.
Soule's company had been ordered to ride with Chivington. Soule objected to Chivington's commands and ordered his men not to participate in the attack on a defenseless village. Chivington wanted him court-martialed for insubordination.
Back in Denver after Sand Creek, Soule informed the authorities in Washington about Chivington's misconduct. When the military commission came to Denver in early 1865 to hold hearings on Sand Creek, Soule testified for a week, detailing the atrocities ordered by Chivington.
Soule was then stationed in Denver. On April 23, 1865, he heard gunshots outside his house. He stepped out, and was shot and killed by a Chivington soldier, Charles W. Squier, near the corner of 15th and Lawrence streets.
Squier fled. He was arrested in New Mexico on June 13, 1865 by Lt. James D. Cannon of Soule's company. They got back to Denver, where Cannon was found dead in his hotel room on July 11. Before Squier could be court-martialed, he escaped, likely with the assistance of Chivington's supporters, and was never found or punished.
Some things don't change. The Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse
scandal was triggered by Joe Darby, a 27-year-old reservist
who saw the abuse and received a CD of pictures that his
fellow guards were passing around. It just didn't sit
right with me,
he said, and he passed it on to the Army
Criminal Investigation Division. Upon his release from the
service, he had to move away from his hometown of
Cumberland, Md., where a lot of people view me as a
traitor
and his life was threatened.
We need to remember Sand Creek and Abu Ghraib. We should also honor the moral courage of young men like Silas Soule and Joe Darby, who did what was right despite tremendous pressure to do otherwise.
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