Mark Meckler appeared on Glenn Beck’s television show last night to talk about the Convention of States Project!  It was a great opportunity to spread the word about the Project, and they had a great conversation. Here are the highlights:

“Under Article V, the states, via the state legislatures, have the right to call for an Amending Convention,” Meckler explained. “And it’s important that we get our language right. It’s not a Constitutional Convention. It does not open the whole Constitution up. This is an untruth that is stated by those people that are against it … It is an Amending Convention which must take place under the rubric of the Constitution itself. And the way it happens is, 34 states issue a call for a convention.”

“What we expect is, somewhere between 15 and 20 states will pass this in 2014,” Meckler said. “We expect to finish off to 34 in 2015. And the goal is to hold the convention in 2016 — great year, presidential year.”

Meckler said that “the purpose of the convention is … to limit the scope, power, and jurisdiction of the federal government,” and “that’s a debate we should be having during a presidential year.”

Beck added that when he has spoken with lawmakers about the topic, they have told him that “the most important thing you can do is restrain our power.” But Congress will never willingly impose term limits on itself, they add. It must happen through the states.

“Our role is to organize the citizenry,” Meckler concluded. “My background is in the Tea Party movement, and so we know how to organize. We have citizens in every state, and we’re organizing literally at the state legislative level in all 50 states right now.”

Check out the full conversation here!

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.