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Reading Made Easy for Foreigners Third Reader by John L. Huelshof

J >> John L. Huelshof >> Reading Made Easy for Foreigners Third Reader





Article XI.

"The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against
one of the United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens
or subjects of any foreign State."[5]


Article XII.--Mode of Choosing the President and Vice-president.

1. "The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by
ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall
not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name
in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct
ballots the person voted for as Vice-president; and they shall make
distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all
persons voted for as Vice-president, and of the number of votes for
each, which lists they shall sign, and certify, and transmit, sealed,
to the seat of government of the United States, directed to the
President of the Senate; the President of the Senate shall, in the
presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the
certificates, and the votes shall then be counted; the person having
the greatest number of votes for President shall be the President, if
such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed;
and if no person have such majority, then, from the persons having the
highest numbers, not exceeding three, on the list of those voted for as
President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by
ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall
be taken by States, the representation from each State having one vote;
a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from
two-thirds of the States, and a majority of all the States shall be
necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not
choose a President, whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon
them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the
Vice-president shall act as President, and in case of the death, or
other constitutional disability, of the President."

2. "The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-president
shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole
number of Electors appointed; and if no person have a majority, then,
from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the
Vice-president; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of
the whole number of Senators; and a majority of the whole number shall
be necessary to a choice."

3. "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of
President, shall be eligible to that of Vice-president of the United
States."


Article XIII.--Abolition of Slavery.

1. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
exist within the United States or any place subject to their
jurisdiction."

2. "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation."


Article XIV.--Right of Citizenship, etc.

1. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

2. "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States
according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of
persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right
to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for President and
Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the
executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the
Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such
State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United
States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion
or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in
the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the
whole number of male citizens, twenty-one years of age, in such State."

3. "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or
Elector of President and Vice-president, or hold any office, civil or
military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having
previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of
the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an
executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution
of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion
against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But
Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such
disability."

4. "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by
law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for
services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be
questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume
or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or
rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or
emancipation of any slave, but all such debts, obligations, and claims
shall be held illegal and void."

5. "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of this article."


Article XV.--Right of Suffrage.

1. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

2. "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation."



[1]The Articles of Confederation proved by experience inadequate to the
wants of the people of the United States, and they were supplanted by
the Constitution.

"The American Constitution, with its manifest defects, still remains
one of the most abiding monuments of human wisdom, and it has received
a tribute to its general excellence such as no other political system
was ever honored with."--FREEMAN.

[2]This clause has been superseded by Amendment XIV., Sect. 2.

[3]This clause has been amended and superseded by the Twelfth Amendment
to the Constitution. By the provisions of the original clause the
person in the electoral college having the greatest number of votes
(provided he had a majority of the whole number of electors appointed)
became President, and the person having the next greatest number of
votes became Vice-president, thus giving the Presidency to one
political party and the Vice-Presidency to another. In the year 1800
the Democratic Republicans determined to elect Thomas Jefferson
President and Aaron Burr Vice-president. The result was that each
secured an equal number of votes, and neither was elected. The
Constitution then, as now, provided that in case the electoral college
failed to elect a President, the House of Representatives, voting as
States, should elect. The Federalists distrusted and disliked
Jefferson; the Democratic Republicans and some of the Federalists
distrusted and disliked Burr. The vote in the House on the
thirty-sixth ballot gave the Presidency to Jefferson and the
Vice-Presidency to Burr. In order to prevent a repetition of so
dangerous a struggle, the Twelfth Amendment, by which the electoral
votes are cast separately for the candidates for President and for
Vice-President, was proposed by Congress Dec. 12, 1803, and declared in
force Sept. 25, 1804.

[4]More than seven hundred amendments to the Constitution have been
proposed since it was adopted. Several are usually proposed at each
session of Congress.

The first twelve articles of amendment to the Federal Constitution were
adopted so soon after the original organization of the Government under
it in 1789 as to justify the statement that they were practically
contemporaneous with the adoption of the original (JUSTICE MILLER, _U.
S. Supreme Court_).

[5]In the case of Chisholm _vs_. The State of Georgia, the Supreme
Court decided that under Article III., Section 2, of the Constitution a
private citizen of a State might bring suit against a State other than
the one of which he was a citizen. This decision, by which a State
might be brought as defendant before the bar of a Federal court, was
highly displeasing to the majority of the States in 1794. On the 5th
of March of that year the Eleventh Amendment was passed by two-thirds
of both houses of Congress, and declared in force January 8, 1798.
Practically, the amendment has been the authority for the repudiation
of debts by several States.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Martha Finley - "Elsie at the World's Fair"

Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892"

Unknown - "Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew"

Marguerite Stockman Dickson - "Vocational Guidance for Girls"

Why shouldn't Sarah Palin get a book deal?
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

The Blackbird of Belfast Lough keeps singing
Jean Hannah Edelstein: Left-leaning Americans should welcome books from Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber

At least 13 ways of looking at a blackbird

Int én bec
    ro léic feit
    do rind guip
    glanbuidi
    fo-ceird faíd
    os Loch Laíg
    lon do craíb
    charnbuidi

This weird little scrap of Irish syllabic verse, probably from the 9th century, consists of just 24 syllables, broken up into eight short lines, which have somehow continued to echo in modern Irish verse: the little lyric seems to have stuck; it has proved itself, in Seamus Heaney's words, to have "staying power".

First used in a metrical tract of the 11th century to illustrate a metre called snám súad, the lyric might be translated, literally, as: "The little bird which has whistled from the end of a bright-yellow bill: it utters a note above Belfast Lough – a blackbird from a yellow-heaped branch" (in a translation by Gerard Murphy). Or perhaps: "The little bird has whistled from the tip of his bright yellow beak; the blackbird from a bough laden with yellow blossom has tossed a cry over Belfast Lough" (translation by David Greene & Frank O'Connor).

Perhaps the poem's recent appeal has something to do with the character of the plucky little bird singing out over Belfast – the site of so much tragedy during the past three decades. Blackbird = poet? That, at least, is one way of looking at it.

Poetic versions, and rewrites, and reinterpretations of the poem abound, by John Montague, and John Hewitt, and Seamus Heaney, and Thomas Kinsella (in The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse), and Tomás Ó Floinn (in modern Irish), and by the current director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Ciaran Carson.

Carson tells the story of how, when appointed as the first director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, he saw a blackbird pecking around in the little garden outside the School of English and thought it might make an interesting symbol for the newly established centre for creative writing. And so "The Blackbird of Belfast Lough", in word and image, became the Centre's motto and emblem.

Some years later, as writer in residence at the Heaney Centre, I found myself in conversation with two artists, the brothers Oliver and Rory Jeffers. We'd occasionally meet, the three of us, on Saturday mornings to drink coffee and to talk about art and literature, and Oliver would sometimes bring along work-in-progress and Rory would try to explain to me the structure and meaning of the language of images (which I never understood). On a whim, and high on caffeine and big ideas, I thought I would invite a number of local and international artists to read "The Blackbird of Belfast Lough" in its original Irish and its English translations, and to make of it what they would. Which is how I found myself putting together an exhibition now on show at the Heaney Centre.

In his preface to the exhibition catalogue Seamus Heaney suggests that the images might be a way of keeping "the perpetual motion machine of art on the go". I couldn't – obviously – have put it better myself.

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