Interrupting regularly scheduled programs

I remember as a kid the odd occasion when one of my favorite television programs would simply disappear from the screen, replaced usually by a stern, older man with a grave voice stating, "We interrupt this regularly scheduled program for an important announcement". It was the only means back then to deliver a breaking news event to the country.

Well, it's kind of happening again. Mankind's regularly scheduled programming this week is Christmas, the focus being on all that brings us joy at this time of year. Yet, for the past few days, the important announcement that's on nearly every newscaster's lips is the story of Colorado's Supreme Court declaring that Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on its State Primary Ballots. What I'm hearing over and over is the 14th Amendment's clause of inciting an insurrection.

This blog is as unplanned as the interruption/public service announcement to one's favorite television show, but, all of this chatter about the 14th Amendment has drawn me into the fray.

In my book, "Oh! Susannah" - an historical fiction found on www.beckleysbooks.com - I outline the history of the 14th Amendment in the prelude to Chapter 22, "Postbellum, Petroleum and Prohibition". The inciting of an insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment is nothing more than an afterthought, comparable to a "player to be named later" in a trade of highly touted sports stars today. The 14th Amendment IS about the guarantee of citizenship to all people born in the United States, regardless of race, and the extension of the Constitution's promise of equality to all American citizens. Some people may be aware that John A. Bingham, a congressman from Cadiz, Ohio at the time, is considered to be "The Father of the 14th Amendment. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black went so far to refer to Bingham as "The James Madison of the 14th Amendment". And yet, Bingham had stiff opposition, namely President Andrew Johnson, who varied between ambivalence and provocation stating enfranchisement for "those persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at no less than two hundred and fifty dollars." The President boasted thereafter, "Not five hundred would be affected."

This is what the 14th Amendment was about back in 1868. The passage of the 14th Amendment became the legal basis for the Supreme Court's subsequent decisions on desegregation of public schools, equality for women and the creation of the right to sexual privacy.

Yes, the 14th Amendment is something worth interrupting your favorite television show for, even at Christmas. Thank you, John A. Bingham.