‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’
-Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
The Tenth Amendment, which is supposed to hold weight equal to the First, Second and every other Amendment to the United States Constitution, has in the last 80 years been regarded as “a nice idea” but optional. This has resulted in usurpation of powers from the States in everything from health care to education (and everything in between).
Far from being taken seriously, the Tenth Amendment has become the red-headed stepchild of the Constitution, and has been ignored with impunity by the Federal government.
There is a movement afoot in Oklahoma, however, to rectify the situation:
Oklahomans are trying to recover some of their lost state sovereignty by House Joint Resolution 1089, introduced by State Rep. Charles Key.
The resolution’s language, in part, reads: “Whereas, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’; and Whereas, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and whereas, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and Whereas, today, in 2008, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government. … Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives and the Senate of the 2nd session of the 51st Oklahoma Legislature: that the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States. That this serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”
The measure passed overwhelmingly in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives, but was hung up in the State Senate (sound familiar?) However, Representative Charles Kay plans to re-introduce the measure when the Oklahoma State House reconvenes next year.
What would upholding the Tenth Amendment entail? Walter E. Williams writes,
Federal usurpation goes beyond anything the Constitution’s framers would have imagined. James Madison, explaining the constitution, in Federalist Paper 45, said, “The powers delegated … to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.” Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the states are not “subordinate” to the national government, but rather the two are “coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. … The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.”
Of course, the eye of the needle through which the camel squeezed its head was the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave the Federal government the authority to regulate interstate commerce. All well and good; however, meaning of the term “commerce” has been twisted and manipulated to not only cover business transactions between residents of different states, but everything else under the sun:
These scholars interpret interstate commerce to mean “substantial interstate human relations” and find this consistent with the meaning of commerce at the time of the writing of the Constitution. They also argue that this expansive interpretation makes more sense for the foreign and Indian commerce clauses as one would expect Congress to be given authority to regulate non-economic relations with other nations and with Indian tribes.
This ‘liberal translation’ of the term, ‘commerce,’ of course, flies in the face of Jefferson’s writings; which is SOP for liberals, who true to their moniker often take great liberty in using the words of the Constitution as so much silly puddy to bend and shape their meaning to fit their cause d’jour. This led to the creation of FDR’s “New Deal,” which led to the notion that the government pretty much had the right to step in to any situation, for any reason, if there was any indication of interstate commerce whatsoever. While minor shifts toward state’s rights have occurred in between, the Federal Government still maintains overwhelming authority over areas of our lives in which they Constitutionally have no business to regulate.
This could be the start of a groundswell of opportunity to defeat Federal usurpation of power, and to once and for all defeat the federal imposition of liberalism and its even uglier cousin, socialism. I look forward to a Republican legislator from my home state of Minnesota to take up this mantle (I know it won’t be a democrat).
Tags: 14th Amendment, Constitution, State's Rights, Tenth Amendment
July 29th, 2008
… probably in 57 states too.
Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Afghanistan, told the paparazzi-pursued correspondent Lara Logan that “the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years.
“And it’s important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are.”
That’s the same Barack Obama, the former constitutional law professor, who apparently doesn’t know the length of a presidential term.
Let’s give the professor a little crash course… from The Constitution, Article II, Section 1:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected […]
Maybe Obama should review it before he continues his campaign, before he gets something else wrong.
Tags: Barack Obama, Constitution
July 22nd, 2008
This subject brought up by this article:
England’s leading Catholic prelate has warned against pressure to make the nation’s public life a “God-free zone.”
In a lecture delivered at Westminster Cathedral, as part of a series of talks on religion and public life, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said that he saw an odd situation in Great Britain, in which widespread interest in religious affairs contrasts with a “considerable spiritual homelessness.”
“Many people have a sense of being in a sort of exile from faith-guided experience,” the cardinal said. “They think that even if they wanted to believe, faith is no longer an option for them.”
The problem, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor suggested, can be traced to “the privatization of religion today.” He explained that too frequently, “religion comes to be treated as a matter of personal need rather than as a truth that makes an unavoidable claim on us.” The problem is aggravated, he said, by “various attempts to eliminate the Christian voice from the public forum.”
To counteract this unhealthy trend, the cardinal said, believers should be forthright in proclaiming their faith. Public discussion of religious beliefs is always difficult, he said, and he urged the faithful to be respectful toward those with other perspectives.
Yet Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor suggested that critics of religion should gain a more accurate understanding of the faith they have rejected. “Have you ever met anyone who believes what Richard Dawkins does not believe in?” he asked the audience. “The God that is being rejected by such people is a God I don’t believe in either.”
One of the more sad things we come across is people in adamant opposition to things we Christians don’t do or believe in - and this cuts right across ideological lines. And so we find some Evangelicals condemning Catholics because they think we worship Mary and the Saints, and some agnostics condemning Christianity as a whole because they think we hate homosexuals. While I’d prefer that no one hate me at all, I figure if you’re going to hate me, then do so for something I’ve actually done or believe.
There is a rather stunning amount of ignorance about religion in general - and Christianity in particular - these days and in agreement with the Cardinal here, I attribute this lack of knowledge not to a lack of desire for religion, but to the excising of religion from the public square. We really are encouraged to keep it to ourselves; a sense that to proclaim one’s faith is, at best, rather rude and, at worst, a direct threat to those who believe differently. And this, I believe, brings up the debate about just what we mean by “separation of Church and State”.
In my view, the separation is a rather one-way street - the State may not interfere with the Church. It is the Believer and his Church who are protected from the State, not the State protected from being influenced by the Believer and his Church. To me the logic of this is inescapable - the State is the creature of the people, and thus cannot in propriety do anything athwart the people save in cases of the most pressing needs of public safety and liberty. I can, using my beliefs, attempt to convince the State, via constitutionally prescribed means, to adhere to my beliefs…but the State may not prescribe my beliefs. The reason we don’t have a State-sponsored religion is not because religion is baleful to public order and liberty, but because the State cannot compel belief. And the State is not the people acting in the public square - the State is a very narrowly defined political entity which is curtailed in its actions by various constitutional rules (”Congress shall make no law”, eg). If I, with my fellow citizens, decide to open a high school graduation ceremony with a prayer, that is not the State compelling belief, but the exercise of belief in the public square.
We are either free to bring all our beliefs to the public square and seek to have them enshrined in law and custom, or we are not free - separation of Church and State is the protection of the people - and their Church - from the State.
What do you think?
Tags: Constitution
May 11th, 2008
The New York Times, which already declared its intent to thwart John McCain’s candidacy, is now following up its previous smear with another ridiculous story questioning whether John McCain is even eligible to be President of the United States, because of his place of birth.
The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.
Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.
Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.
“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”
Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a Navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that Mr. McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.
Obviously since this has been vetted before, the New York Times really has no reason to try to inject new life to the claim. This seems quite typical of the Left smear tactics. When Mitt Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts, his Democrat opponents called his residency into question because he had been temporarily living in Utah to manage the Olympics. When Tom DeLay has retired from the House and moved to Virginia, Democrats challenged his residency (by saying he was still a resident of Texas) in order to keep him on the ballot.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Democrats pursue this. If they make any attempt to challenge McCain’s eligibility, then they will do so out of fear.
Tags: Constitution, John McCain, natural born citizen, residency
February 28th, 2008
