Constitutional Amendments

* Victor Kamber’s “Don’t Mess With Our Constitution” (Commentary, June 26), complaining that Republicans have introduced 148 amendments since they became a majority, is an example of why the public places columnists just below politicians and bookies for credibility and accuracy.

If Kamber wasn’t just doing the usual Republican- or conservative-bashing, he could have discovered, with minimal research, that there have been 10,786 constitutional amendments proposed in Congress since 1789. And in the last Congress (1993-94 and Democrat-controlled) there were 175 proposed amendments offered. So much for nonpartisan, truthful journalism.

P. R. PUMA

La Quinta

* Kamber would have us believe that the recent Republican-backed proposals for a number of constitutional amendments would, if enacted, amount to desecration of what he characterizes as a durable document that (according to him) has remained virtually unchanged for 206 years.

His premise of durability is based on the fact that there have been only 17 formal amendments since the Bill of Rights. Apparently he hopes that we will not recognize the myriad less-formal (but nonetheless often equally substantive)--changes that have been imposed over the past several decades by liberal Supreme Court interpretations, changes over which the voting public has had no control.

Somehow, Mr. Kamber, I much prefer the way the Republicans are going about it.

RICHARD A. CHASE

Corona

* I applaud Kamber’s ideas about the inanity of Republican amendment proposals, but I disagree on two points. One, that America is a democracy, and two, that the Constitution doesn’t need to be changed. I agree that the 22nd Amendment should be repealed, but the irony is that F.D.R., whose credibility this amendment impugns, recommended in his annual message to Congress on Jan. 11, 1944, a new economic bill of rights that included eight new economic amendments. Even if the first--the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, etc., of the nation--were to have been added to the Constitution, this would be now what it is not--a real democracy--instead of a corporate-dominated plutocracy, as it is.

Democracy derives its authority from the law of nature and a democratic government is then one based on the natural right of man to be free. As President Roosevelt said in justifying his bill of rights, “necessitous men are not free men.” The exploitation of man, whether by chains or low wages, is a form of slavery--the game plan we now have in America.

We will never have genuine democracy until we recognize that political rights are a farce without economic rights. The New Deal is fast becoming the old deal because we have chosen to ignore our greatest President’s plan for bona fide democracy and a high standard of living for all Americans. We have chosen pseudo-democracy and are paying for it dearly.

ED WODE

Venice

* Re “House Approves Amendment to Ban Flag Desecration,” June 29: Flag-burning is not only an issue of government interference in the right of free speech, it is also an issue of government meddling with personal property. If I go to the store and buy an American flag with money I’ve earned, I reserve the right to fly that flag, burn it, or use it as a tablecloth if I see fit. It is not the business of Newt Gingrich or anyone else to try and tell me otherwise. “Don’t Tread on Me” is the flag I’ll be flying.

JOHN SMART

Los Angeles