Free Republic

Oklahoma Rebellionby Walter Williams  (July 16, 2008) One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more...

On March 13 the Oklahoma House passed House Joint Resolution 1089, sponsored by Rep. Charles Key and Sen. Randy Brogdon, “claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers,” by an overwhelming vote of 92 to 3. Opponents of the measure in the Senate managed to keep it from being debated and voted on before this year’s legislative session ended. The rest of the nation took little notice of the Oklahoma House’s affirmation of the Tenth Amendment at the time. However, suddenly in mid-June news of the vote on HJR1089 went viral. Google...

One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more properly described as wars of...

The last case directly involving the Second Amendment before D.C. V. HELLER was UNITED STATES V. MILLER, decided in 1939. A great deal of misinformation has been written about MILLER, but the facts are much stranger than most of the fiction that has been printed about the case. The article that is linked reveals fascinating items about the MILLER case. The trial judge, Hiram Heartsill Ragon, was a partisan Democrat Roosevelt appointee who was endorsed by the KKK. Ragon was an anti-gun activist who used the criminal, Miller, as his vehicle to fashion a test case for the Roosevelt administration...

STATE OF OKLAHOMA 2nd Session of the 51st Legislature (2008) HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 1089 By: Key AS INTRODUCED A Joint Resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates; and directing distribution. 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 duly elected sheriff of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county. He has law enforcement powers that exceed that of any other state or federal official. This is settled law that most people are not aware of. County sheriffs in Wyoming have scored a big one for the 10th Amendment and states rights. The sheriffs slapped a federal intrusion upside the head and are insisting that all federal law enforcement officers and personnel from federal regulatory agencies must clear all their activity in a Wyoming County with the Sheriff’s Office. Deja vu for those who...

<p>Unlawful Government: Preserving America in a Post-constitutional Age by Wilton H. Strickland (West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2006), Amazon.com $11.95.</p> <p>Unlawful Government presents historical and legal evidence to argue that the federal government has utterly cast off its constitutional limitations, thereby transforming America from a voluntary, civil society into a compulsory, political one. Such massive concentration of political power in one entity’s hands contradicts both the law and the modern world, whose hallmarks are decentralization, competition, and individual freedom. The book ultimately recommends that States and local communities re-assert their independence, either immediately or incrementally, in order to unravel the illicit federal power and to allow diverse communities to pursue their priorities free from unlawful federal intrusion.</p>

How do you devise a system of limited government that actually works? It is easy enough to put words on paper that purport to accomplish that task, but where has that (or any other) approach worked in the long run? Certainly not in the United States, where the Founders’ design for a limited and highly decentralized system of government came apart at the seams in the 20th century. What is very little known, even among those few Americans who have an understanding of the Constitution and our early history, is how quickly the stitching began to fray. The new nation...

Call it the 10th Amendment Restoration Act. A bill introduced by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, promises to return to the states those issues federal courts, by their decisions, "have wrested from state and local governments." H.R. 4379, the We the People Act, would remove from federal courts' jurisdiction any case involving religious liberty; sexual practices, orientation or reproduction; and same-sex marriage. Paul's bill, most recently introduced Nov. 17, notes: "Article I, section 8 and article 3, section 1 of the Constitution of the United States give Congress the power to establish and limit the jurisdiction of the lower Federal courts,"...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court under new Chief Justice John Roberts cleared the way on Monday for a pregnant Missouri prisoner to obtain an abortion, despite objections from state officials. In a brief order without comment or recorded dissent, the high court rejected Missouri's request to put on hold a federal judge's order requiring that prison authorities transport the inmate to a St. Louis clinic for an abortion.How Roberts would rule on abortion was a major issue in his confirmation hearings in the Senate. This was the first abortion-related case the court has acted upon since he...

Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri has vetoed a "medical marijuana" bill, saying it would encourage marijuana use and criminal activity. His veto comes as an anti-drug group has released dramatic video footage of a marijuana activist declaring that he uses dope for a health problem that he doesn't really have. The bottom line for this activist, Ed Rosenthal, is that "I like to get high. Marijuana is fun." The video has the potential of dealing a major blow to the "medical marijuana" movement, largely funded by billionaire George Soros. The video footage, posted at the website http://www.sorosmonitor.com, gives the...

No Clause for Celebration USA -- In its recent decision upholding the federal government's authority to pluck marijuana from the hands of desperately ill people who use it as a medicine, the U.S. Supreme Court noted in passing that "most domestic drug regulations prior to 1970 generally came in the guise of revenue laws." That's a puzzling fact if, as the Court now insists, the power to "regulate Commerce...among the several States" includes the power to ban certain plants and their products from backyards and dresser drawers throughout the nation. As the Court explained, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937...

"States' rights" has always been anathema to liberals--a code word for the Southern racism that embraced slavery, and later segregation. Nowadays, however, in an era when Red America controls the federal government and pushes things like a national ban on gay marriage, progressives are embracing states' rights: the founding fathers' idea of Federalism, in which states cede a few key powers to D.C. while maintaining robust sovereignty themselves. So, what's the latest group to make the case that states' rights should determine policy? Try the flaming liberals at the King County Bar Association (KCBA), who on March 3 will release...

From Powers to Rights, a Conservative Vision -- Clearly, the American debate began with rights--with the protests that led eventually to the Declaration of Independence. And in that seminal document, Jefferson made rights the centerpiece of the American vision: rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, derived from a premise of moral equality, itself grounded in a higher law discoverable by reason--all to be secured by a government of powers made legitimate through consent. But when they set out to draft a constitution, the Framers focused on powers, not rights, for two main reasons. First, their initial task...

I first became aware of Thomas E. Woods Jr.'s Politically Incorrect Guide to American History when the New York Times Book Review took note of its rise on the paperback bestseller list and described it as a "neocon retelling of this nation's back story." A neocon retelling? What would that be, exactly? Curious to find out, I cracked open The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. It gets off to a slow start with a recitation of civics-text nuggets. Bet you didn't know that the Constitution "established three distinct branches of government — executive, legislative, and judicial — and provided...

I've not seen anyone raise the issue of the constutionality of the President's proposed Social Security reforms. As we remember, the Supreme Court considered the issue of whether the Social Security Act violated the 10th Amendment and exceeded the constitutional powers of Congress in the 1937 case of Helvering v. Davis. The Supreme Court, in upholding the Act's constitutionality in Helvering, held that Congress has the power to spend money to promote whatever Congress deems to be in “the general welfare.” I've seen some excellent threads on here (specifically one started by Alan Chapman on March 7, 2001, entitled The...

The birth of this nation was not without its labor pains. Right from the start there was dissension among the Founding Fathers - especially when it came to drafting a new constitution. The “federalists,” stressing the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation, called for a stronger national government. The “antifederalists,” on the other hand, believed that this centralization of power could only lead to tyranny. States’ rights advocate Richard Henry Lee saw the inherent problems of what the federalists were proposing: “To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should...

What States Rights Really Mean by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. William J. Watkins, Jr., Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Ask the typical undergraduate to discuss the ideas advanced in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and you may as well be asking for an overview of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. Yet these nearly forgotten documents fully merit a place among the most important political writings in American history, both in terms of the ideas they put forth and the influence they had on subsequent generations...

Bar-coded licenses promoted in New Jersey Published in the Home News Tribune 12/30/04 WASHINGTON -- Walk into one of New Jersey's 45 motor-vehicle offices to get a drivers license and you're instantly under surveillance by closed-circuit TV and an undercover officer. Even before you get in line, a state worker checks your passport, birth certificate or other required documents. When you get your license, you'll notice a bar code on the back that police officers can read with electronic scanners to verify your identity -- one of 22 security features built into the card. And forget about renewing your license...

BY THE NUMBERS A poll question commissioned by Texans for Medical Marijuana found a cross-section of support for its cause. The 2004 Texas Poll broke down the responses using the following criteria: • Age: 81 percent of those 18 to 29 and 72 percent of those 60 and older • Income : 74 percent of both those making less than $10,000 a year and those making $60,001 and above • Race/Ethnicity: 74 percent of anglos, 79 percent of Hispanics and 80 percent of blacks • Education: 69 percent of those who didn't graduate high school and 71 percent of those...

I. The Tenth Amendment and Enumerated Powers The Tenth Amendment states: "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." By its terms the amendment tells us nothing about which powers are delegated to the federal government, which are prohibited to the states, or which are reserved to the states or to the people. To determine that, we have to look to the centerpiece of the Constitution, the doctrine of enumerated powers. That doctrine is discussed at length in the Federalist...

In a recent article, Bill Kristol wrote that Howard Dean would paint President Bush as a "constitution amending radical" for supporting a Constitutional Ban on gay marriage. Dean may make the point during the election if Bush comes out for the amendment, but is it reasonable? If you go back to 1960 or even 1980, or 2000, where was the conservative call for a Federal Marriage amendment? It did not exist. Go back to the 1960s, where was the Conservative call for a Constitutional Amendment to ban abortion? It was unheard of. Why now are these so linked with Conservatism?...

Civics 101 -- Getting it right... Mark Alexander (archive) August 29, 2003 | Print | Send Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's defiance of a federal court's mandate to remove a Ten Commandments display from the rotunda at the Alabama judicial building has been debated vigorously in recent weeks, mostly out of context. Much of the public debate about this case has taken a wide detour around the substantive constitutional question, instead focusing on the Ten Commandments: Are they the foundation of Western law? Should they be displayed in state and local public places? Are such displays promotions of religion or...

What happened to the Tenth Amendment? By Robert Greenslade Published 01. 23. 03 at 20:39 Sierra Time As the federal government continues to unlawfully expand its powers beyond those granted by the Constitution and transform itself into the national form of government rejected by the Founders, many constitutionally astute Americans are asking "what happened to the Tenth Amendment?" Since its adoption in 1791, the Tenth Amendment has been viewed as a barrier to any attempt by the federal government to overstep its constitutional authority. The Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor...

HELENA- Montana became the first state in the nation to prohibit the sale of state owned land to the federal government. “This is an accomplishment I am very very proud of,” said Representative Rick Maedje (R) – Fortine about his amendment to House Bill 223. House Bill 223 authorizes the state land board to sell school trust lands that are not producing income from grazing, timber, mining, or oil and gas. The measure was dubbed “the state land banking bill” and it also allows the land board to purchase more productive lands in its place. “I don’t disagree with the...

The The Bill of Rights Preamble Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine. THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the...