While the Founding Fathers did their best to create documents that would stand the test of time, a persistent enough enemy with a good deal of creative schemes can find ways around everything. And so we’re dealing with the absurd situation in which a bureaucrat can decide if an amendment is in or not.

Three Republicans senators are urging the U.S. Archivist not to certify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) amid a campaign by Democrats, who are calling for the decades-old statute to be added to the Constitution.

Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) penned a letter to U.S. Archivist David Ferriero on Tuesday, asking for his “commitment” that he will not certify the ERA.

The ERA, widely believed to be dead, was revived when lefties decided that getting states they now controlled to vote for it was a good gimmick. And much as with every one of their creative power grabs, we’re facing yet another crisis. This one is about as unconstitutional as it gets.

The Founding Fathers never intended to allow a faction to drag around an amendment long enough by using temporarily flipped states to vote for it until over time, much like the monkeys writing Hamlet, it had enough votes. 

If you argue, as ERA lefties do, that a state can’t withdraw, then anything can be added as an amendment through the sheer partisan arithmetic of time. Democrats just need to control enough states across a few generations to make that happen.

The only thing more absurd than insisting the ERA should be in the Constitution is the idea that an unelected bureaucrat would get a vote in this.

David Ferriero, who I’m not attacking personally here, was Obama’s nominee after working at the New York Public Library. He’s set to retire now. And he doesn’t get to make decisions like this. It’s vastly above his pay grade. But here we are anyway.

This is typical of the leftist strategy of seizing opportunities anywhere they can find in the vast expanses of the federal government. And making the most of obscure offices, positions, and pieces of legislation.

The letter comes as Democrats and advocacy groups are encouraging Ferriero to add the ERA to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment before he retires from his post in April.

“In light of the calls for you to disregard your duty and certify the ERA, we write to ask for your commitment that you, and the acting Archivist who will take over in April, will not certify or publish the ERA, which failed to achieve ratification by the states and is no longer pending before them,” the senators wrote.

Tuesday’s letter cited previous comments from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) , who reportedly said Ferriero “told us how much he believed in the ERA, that he wanted to be the Archivist that would make it happen, to deliver it and do his ceremonial job and ratify it.”

“So that’s exactly what he should do. It is ridiculous he’s holding this up,” Maloney reportedly added.

Push this to the logical limit and we really will have two versions of the Constitution to bring that cold civil war much closer.