by Steve Palmer, Pennsylvania Tenth Amendment Center
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The act of usurping, especially the wrongful seizure of royal sovereignty.
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A wrongful seizure or exercise of authority or privilege belonging to another; an encroachment
As readers of this web site are doubtless aware, the Tenth Amendment says,
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.
Often when people paraphrase the Tenth Amendment, they will say something like this, “The federal government is only allowed to do certain specific things which are listed in the Constitution. The federal government is not allowed to do anything which isn’t listed in the Constitution”.
This is true as far as it goes, but I’d like to draw attention to the words “are reserved” and ask you to think carefully about them. “The powers not delegated? are reserved to the States? or to the people”.
The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to throw its support behind a plan to save Arizona’s forests put forward by the Arizona Cattle Growers Association.
“Save Arizona’s Forest Environment,” or SAFE, is a plan that proposes to suspend the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for five years, with the goal of making U.S. Forest Service lands less prone to catastrophic wildfires by increasing logging and grazing on those lands. NEPA, enacted in 1970, is an environmental-protection law best known for mandating Environmental Impact Statements before federal government actions.
The plan contends that Arizona grew 55,000 fewer head of cattle in 2010 than 1993, a number that’s in decline because forest once used as rangeland has been “lost.” “Recent USFS policies to only allow 35 percent to 40 percent of available forage to be consumed by livestock has led to a large buildup of plant fibers and fuels in our forests,” the plan says. This material, it continues, is “ripe for fire fuels.”
Two years ago, I posted an item on the Tenth Amendment Center website entitled, “It’s the People’s Right.” My point was that federalism was not created primarily for the benefit of the states or state officials, but for the protection of individual liberty.
I didn’t invent this argument-many others have recognized that it is the better reading of the ratification-era record. Among those was Chief Justice John Marshall, himself a leading ratifier.
But my post elicited some grumbling among advocates of the traditional “states’ rights” view of federalism. Generally these are folks who believe (based mostly on post-ratification evidence) that the Constitution was not a grant from the people but a mere “compact” among the states.
Now, however, the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously and resoundingly adopted the “people’s right” view in one of the best Tenth Amendment decisions to come along in years.
In Bond v. United States, the Court held that a person prosecuted under a federal criminal statute may defend himself by showing that the statute exceeds the federal government’s enumerated powers, and therefore violates the Tenth Amendment.
What do we do when the Federal Government steps beyond it’s Constitutional bounds? Not only is that the subject of this speech by Jason Rink, Executive Director of The Foundation for a Free Society, from Nullify Now Los Angeles, it’s the question Thomas Jefferson and James Madison sought to address when they drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. The ink was barely dry on the Bill of Rights when John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts in law, and began throwing American citizens into jail for publicly and privately expressing unapproved opinions. In response to these first-amendment shredding, unconstitutional Acts,
by Connor Boyack, with Brian Roberts and Michael Boldin
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice upped the ante in a high-stakes political game of chicken. Lobbying against pending legislation in the Texas legislature which would criminalize any searches conducted without probable cause, U.S. Attorney John E. Murphy sent a letter to a few high-ranking members of Texas’ government warning against promoting the bill and threatening a complete closure of all flights to and from the state.
“If HR [sic] 1937 were enacted, the federal government would likely seek an emergency stay of the statute,” Murphy wrote. “Unless or until such a stay were granted, TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew.”
No doubt written with the threatening intent one reads into it, Murphy added: “We urge that you consider the ramifications of this bill before casting your vote.”
by Jim Vetter, Pennsylvania Tenth Amendment Center
There are several solutions in the marketplace of ideas on how to address the Federal Government’s unconstitutional over-reach into Health Care with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (PPACA) or ObamaCare. One such idea is the Health Care Compact . Under the proposal, any groups of States would seek Congressional Consent to regulate Health Care in their States. If approved by Congress, member states would have the right to Federal monies up to a preset amount listed in the table of Member State Base Funding Levels. States would then use those Federal monies to implement health care in accordance with Federal laws and any State laws approved under the Compact.
The Health Care Compact is a well-intended effort to return health care decisions to the States. However, is it the most effective method in keeping with the principles of limited government and Federalism? Consider the following.
Congressional Consent
Why implement a structure that requires Consent of Congress and the Federal Government in this instance? Aren’t these the very entities that gave us ObamaCare and are the root of the larger problem in America? How likely are they to just give up their entrenched power? If history is a judge, not likely.
Personally, I value the opinions of the people of Arizona more than a couple of left wing activist judges.
Photo by: Gage Skidmore
Monday’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision against Arizona’s SB 1070 demonstrates the complete contempt that many federal judges have for the Constitution and the democratic process. Unfortunately, judges all too frequently abuse their power to impose their own agenda. The 9th Circuit is widely held as the most activist court in the nation and even ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. The decision against SB 1070 went a step farther in that the judges explicitly appealed to their own ideological and political concerns, and went as far as to cite the views of anti-American dictators as a justification for subverting the rule of law.
Justice Richard Paez, who wrote the decision, argued that the law has “created actual foreign policy problems.” Among the “problems” he cited was the disapproval of the Mexican government, the United Nations Human Rights commissioners, the government of Bolivia, and the Organization of American States. What he does not mention is that the United Nations commission includes dictatorships such as Cuba and Saudi Arabia . Cuba is also a member of the Organization of American States, as are the socialist dictatorships of Bolivia and Venezuela .
The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Cuba for more than fifty years. In 2008, Bolivian President Evo Morales said that all Latin American nations should expel American ambassadors and cheered on a mob who tried to burn down our embassy. He said, “I don’t mind being a permanent nightmare for the United States .” Venezuela ‘s dictator Hugo Chavez has spewed so much anti-American rhetoric that even Barack Obama expelled their ambassador just three months ago. Chavez had called Bush the “devil” and Obama “Satan.”
Judicial Watch Wins Motion in SB 1070 Lawsuit!
This week, let’s start with a big Judicial Watch victory.
On Wednesday, April 5, our client, the Arizona State Legislature, was granted permission to intervene as a defendant in the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit against SB 1070, Arizona’s get-tough illegal
immigration law. Judge Susan Bolton granted Judicial Watch’s motion over the objections of the Obama DOJ. Here’s a quick squib from the order, which was short and sweet:
On February 7, 2011, Arizona Governor Janice K. Brewer signed into law Senate Bill 1117 (“S.B. 1117″), which provides that “the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate may direct counsel to initiate a legal proceeding or appear on behalf of their respective chambers or on behalf of the Legislature in any challenge in a state or federal court” to S.B. 1070. The Legislature now seeks permission of the Court to intervene as a Defendant in this action?permitting the Legislature to intervene at this time will not unduly delay or prejudice the original parties?the Court in its discretion finds that the Legislature should be permitted to intervene as Defendant at this time.
Now, the Legislature joins the State of Arizona, Governor Brewer and the author of the law, Arizona State Senate President and Judicial Watch client Russell Pearce, for the purpose of defending its enactment of SB 1070 in the interests of the people of Arizona.
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of an Arizona school voucher program that critics say improperly directs taxpayer funds to religious schools.
Monday’s 5-4 ruling expands long-standing court precedents that citizens don’t have standing to legally challenge taxes they don’t like simply because they’re taxpayers.
The minority on the court maintained that since the case involved claims of a violation of religious freedoms, that the Arizona plaintiffs didn’t need to demonstrate a specific personal injury.
The decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by the court’s more conservative members, preserves Arizona’s school voucher program that is funded by tax credits offered to state taxpayers. Most of the students who use the voucher money attend religious schools.
Opponents of the Arizona system filed a lawsuit claiming the $500 tax credit, available to all individual taxpayers, designed to help pay for private education violates the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing any religion in the United States. The high court in 1968 said taxpayers didn’t need to show that they had been personally harmed when lodging an Establishment Clause claim.??
