Regardless that Ryan has heard the Constitution read out loud in the House at the beginnings of the last three legislative sessions, and regardless that he has taken the oath to protect and defend the Constitution, the House under Speaker Ryan nonetheless blatantly ignored the following with respect to its passing of the Omnibus spending bill.
The House wrongly ignored the clarification of a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Remember in November !
When patriots elect Trump, Cruz, or whatever conservative they elect, they need to also elect a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will not only work within its Section 8-limited powers to support the new president, but also protect the states from unconstitutional federal government overreach, including putting a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes.
Also, consider that such a Congress would probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
You’re the only guy around here who is going to get this one. I’ve been holding it in my back pocket for the right time. Enjoy!
In one of the more fascinating and surreal scenes, Atticus and Scout (here known as Jean Louise) have an extended conversation about the Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Tenth Amendment.
Her father leaned back in his chair. He said, “Jean Louise, you’ve been reading nothing but New York papers. I’ve no doubt all you see is wild threats and bombings and such. The Maycomb council’s not like the North Alabama and Tennessee kinds. Our council’s composed of and led by our own people. I bet you saw nearly every man in the county yesterday, and you knew nearly every man there.”
“Yes sir, I did. Every man from that snake Willoughby on down.”
“Each man there was probably there for a different reason,” said her father.
No war was ever fought for so many different reasons. Who said that? “Yeah, but they all met for one reason.”
“I can tell you the two reasons I was there. The Federal Government and the NAACP. Jean Louise, what was your first reaction to the Supreme Court decision?”
That was a safe question. She would answer him.
“I was furious,” she said.
She was. She had known it was coming, knew what it would be, had thought she was prepared for it, but when she bought a newspaper on the street corner and read it, she stopped at the first bar she came to and drank down a straight bourbon.
“Why?”
“Well sir, there they were, tellin’ us what to do again—”
Her father grinned. “You were merely reacting according to your kind,” he said. “When you started using your head, what did you think?”
“Nothing much, but it scared me. It seemed all backward— they were putting the cart way out in front of the horse.”
“How so?”
He was prodding her. Let him. They were on safe ground. “Well, in trying to satisfy one amendment, it looks like they rubbed out another one. The Tenth. It’s only a small amendment, only one sentence long, but it seemed to be the one that meant the most, somehow.”
“Did you think this out for yourself?”
“Why, yes sir. Atticus, I don’t know anything about the Constitution. . . .”
“You seem to be constitutionally sound so far. Proceed.”
Proceed with what? Tell him she couldn’t look him in the eye? He wanted her views on the Constitution, then he’d have ’em: “Well, it seemed that to meet the real needs of a small portion of the population, the Court set up something horrible that could— that could affect the vast majority of folks. Adversely, that is. Atticus, I don’t know anything about it— all we have is the Constitution between us and anything some smart fellow wants to start, and there went the Court just breezily canceling one whole amendment, it seemed to me. We have a system of checks and balances and things, but when it comes down to it we don’t have much check on the Court, so who’ll bell the cat? Oh dear, I’m soundin’ like the Actors Studio.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m— I’m just trying to say that in trying to do right we’ve left ourselves open for something that could be truly dangerous to our set-up.” She ran her fingers through her hair. She looked at the rows of brown-and-black bound books, law reports, on the wall opposite. She looked at a faded picture of the Nine Old Men on the wall to the left of her. Is [JB: Owen?] Roberts dead? she wondered. She could not remember.
Her father’s voice was patient: “You were saying—?” “Yes sir. I was saying that I— I don’t know much about government and economics and all that, and I don’t want to know much, but I do know that the Federal Government to me, to one small citizen, is mostly dreary hallways and waiting around. The more we have, the longer we wait and the tireder we get. Those old mossbacks on the wall up there knew it— but now, instead of going about it through Congress and the state legislatures like we should, when we tried to do right we just made it easier for them to set up more hallways and more waiting—”
Her father sat up and laughed.
“I told you I didn’t know anything about it.”
“Sweet, you’re such a states’ rightist you make me a Roosevelt Liberal by comparison.”
“States’ rightist?”
Atticus said, “Now that I’ve adjusted my ear to feminine reasoning, I think we find ourselves believing the very same things.”
She had been half willing to sponge out what she had seen and heard, creep back to New York, and make him a memory. A memory of the three of them, Atticus, Jem, and her, when things were uncomplicated and people did not lie. But she would not have him compound the felony.
She could not let him add hypocrisy to it: “Atticus, if you believe all that, then why don’t you do right? I mean this, that no matter how hateful the Court was, there had to be a beginning—”
“You mean because the Court said it we must take it? No ma’am. I don’t see it that way. If you think I for one citizen am going to take it lying down, you’re quite wrong. As you say, Jean Louise, there’s only one thing higher than the Court in this country, and that’s the Constitution—”