Rhode Island Governor Vetoes Pro-Life, Pro-Adoption License Plate Measure

The New American ^ | 7-20-13 | Dave Bohon

[ReformationFan]

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee (shown) has vetoed a bill that would have authorized the state to offer a “Choose Life” license plate to raise funds for a faith-based crisis pregnancy center in the state. The governor cited the First Amendment's supposed separation of church and state mandate that he insisted prohibited the state government from involving itself in such a campaign. The measure, which was approved by the Democrat-controlled state legislature earlier this month, would have allowed half of the $40 cost of the vehicle plates to go to Providence-based CareNet, a Christian crisis pregnancy center. Supporters said the campaign would have helped to reduce abortions in the state.

Pro-abortion activists had asked Chafee to veto the bill for the plates, which 29 other states currently offer. While the state offers other messages on its license plates, Chafee nonetheless advised lawmakers in his veto that the sole function of a license plate is “to register and identify a motor vehicle.” He said it was his conviction that “state participation in the transmission of funds to this organization would violate the separation of church and state, one of the fundamental principles upon which our state was founded.” He claimed that the “framers of the United States and Rhode Island Constitutions constructed strong walls of separation between church and state. This bill compels the state to collect and distribute funds to an organization that advocates a particular religious and political viewpoint.”

Barth Bracy of Rhode Island Right to Life challenged Chafee's stated reason for the veto.

[Amendment10]

The governor cited the First Amendment's supposed separation of church and state mandate that he insisted prohibited the state government from involving itself in such a campaign.

(Note that most of the following material concerning 10th Amendment-protected state power to address religious issues has been previously posted in related threads.)

Regarding the governor's PC statement about church and state separation, the governor ignores that, regardless what FDR's activist justices wanted everybody to believe about "atheist" Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation," the real Jefferson had clarified the following about government power to address religious issues. Jefferson had indicated that Founding States had made the 10th Amendment to clarify that the states had reserved government power to regulate our "absolute" 1st Amendment protected freedoms to themselves, including the power to regulate religion, regardless that they had also made the 1st Amendment to prohibit such powers entirely to Congress.

"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed (emphasis added); …" --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.

Note that while state power to address religious issues may sound threatening to patriots who have been indoctrinated with PC interpretations of the establishment clause, it is the same power which authorizes states to allow public schools to teach things like creationiism for example, such power now limited by the honest interpretation of the 14th Amendment (14A).

And speaking of 14A, the reason that many people now think that the Founding States had intended for the 1st Amendment's prohibition on certain powers to Congress, including the power to address religious issues, also applies to the states, "the government," is as follows. Constitution-ignoring FDR was reelected enough times that he was able to establish a majority of activist, pro-unconstitutionally big federal government justices. These justices blatantly ignored the 10th Amendment in key cases which tested the limits of Congress's Commerce Clause powers, Wickard v. Filburn being one of those cases.

However, these renegade justices went beyond the scope of allowing corrupt Congress to overstep its Section 8-limited power, attacking 10A-protected state power to address religious issues as well. This is evidenced by the following excerpt from Cantwell v. Connecticut.

"The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws. (emphasis added) The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect." --Mr. Justice Roberts, Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 1940.

The major constitutional problem with the above statement is the following. By applying 14A to Canwtell in the context of 10A-protected state power to address religious issues, outcome-driven justices wrongly ignored that John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of 14A, had officially clarified in the congressional record that 14A took away no state powers.

"The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights (emphasis added) that belong to the States." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (see bottom half of 1st column)

"No right (emphasis added) reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired…" --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (see top half of 1st column)

"Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existance." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (see bottom half of third column)

So despite his oath to protect and defend the Constitution, the constitutonally ignorant governor of Rhode Island unsurprisingly does not understand that Jefferson had not only acknowledged 10A-proteced state power to address religious issues, but also that Bingham had clarified in general that 14A did not take such powers away from the states.

Finally, misguided people like the governor of Rhode Island are not the problem with the country. The real problem is that generations of parents have not been making sure that their children are being taught the Constitution and its history, particularly the Founding States' constitutonally enumerated division of federal and state powers. Such powers are evidenced by the Constitution's Section 8 of Article I, Article V and the 10th Amendment. Widespread ignorance of the Constitution is what gives people like this governor the license to walk all over our constitutional freedoms.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Terrible thing to say. You owe the Satanists an apology.