After spending a lifetime in politics John C. Calhoun (U.S. Senator, Vice President of the United States, Secretary of War) wrote his brilliant treatise, A Disquisition on Government, which was published posthumously shortly after his death in 1850. In it Calhoun warned that it is an error to believe that a written constitution alone is “sufficient, of itself, without the aid of any organism except such as is necessary to separate its several departments, and render them independent of each other to counteract the tendency of the numerical majority to oppression and abuse of power” (p. 26). The separation of powers is fine as far as it goes, in other words, but it would never be a sufficient defense against governmental tyranny, said Calhoun.
Last December, when Tennessee Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mount Juliet, said she would introduce legislation which would declare null and void any federal law the state deems unconstitutional, some people were horrified. Rep. Lynn was specifically targeting the health-care reform legislation that was pending at that time. But the reaction that many people had to her language was not an expression of their support for Obamacare.
On 27 May 1861, the army of the United States of America (the Union) – a nation which had been formed by consecutive secessions, first from Great Britain in 1776, and then from itself in 1788 – invaded the State of Virginia,1 which had itself recently seceded from the Union, in an effort to negate Virginia’s secession by violent force. Read More...
New World Order
Compendium of State Sovereignty Resolutions and Nullification Acts
The Tenth Amendment Center, an organization seeking to promote the original concept of state sovereignty, has gathered information on various actions taken by state legislatures in protest to current federal actions. The actions involve issues on both the conservative and liberal ends of the political spectrum. Read More...
Illegal Health Reform
Originally Posted At The Washington Post
By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey
President Obama has called for a serious and reasoned debate about his plans to overhaul the health-care system. Any such debate must include the question of whether it is constitutional for the federal government to adopt and implement the president's proposals. Consider one element known as the "individual mandate," which would require every American to have health insurance, if not through an employer then by individual purchase. This requirement would particularly affect young adults, who often choose to save the expense and go without coverage. Without the young to subsidize the old, a comprehensive national health system will not work. But can Congress require every American to buy health insurance? Read More...
The Hollowing Out Of American Federalism A short history of the destruction of state sovereignty
Originally Posted July 11, 2009
Revised October 16, 2009
By Lawrence A. Hunter Ph.D.
What Is The Federal System Of Government? Many people mistakenly equate “Federalism” with decentralization. A federal system is certainly a decentralized system but it is also much more. The defining characteristics of federalism are... Before the term “states’ rights” became contaminated by its identification with the efforts of some states to perpetuate slavery and later racial segregation, “states’ rights” concisely described the states’ legal and political autonomy although the term always constituted a shorthand reference to states’ constitutional and political autonomy vis-à-vis the national government as opposed to natural rights, which only individuals possess. Read More...
The 2nd American Revolution
Originally Posted At Lew Rockwell
By Gerald Celente
August 14, 2009
The natives are restless. The third shot of the “Second American Revolution” has been fired. History is being made. But just as with the first two shots, the third shot is not being heard. America is seething. Not since the Civil War has anything like this happened. But the protests are either being intentionally downplayed or ignorantly misinterpreted. The first shot was fired on April 15, 2009. Over 700 anti-tax rallies and “Tea Parties” erupted nationwide. Read More...
We watched as they destroyed the financial sector by forcing banks to give loans to people that could not afford them… then they stepped in to “save the day” by gaining direct control of our financial sector.
We watched as they destroyed a once powerful automotive industry through excessive regulation and labor union control… then they stepped in to “save the day” by gaining direct control of our automotive industry.
We listened as they verbally assaulted capitalism when government regulations were to blame. Read More...
How can Congress get around the Tenth Amendment and regulate almost every aspect of American life? One way is by claiming that the Tenth Amendment doesn’t apply because Congress is merely acting within the scope of its enumerated powers. But to make this claim, one must assume that some of the enumerated powers are much broader than they really are. One of the enumerated powers cited by advocates of the modern monster-state is the Commerce Power. This derives primarily from two sources: Read More...
Even as California struggles with a catastrophic fiscal crisis and other states scramble to avoid the same fate, Democrats in Washington are proposing health care measures that would add hundreds of billions of dollars of spending to state budgets. Thus far, very little of the debate surrounding the push to overhaul the nation’s health care system has focused on the federalism concerns raised by several provisions within legislation pending in Congress. Taken together, the measures will impose a raft of new financial and regulatory obligations on individual states. Read More...
As Britain and France battled each other in the early 1800's, enterprising Americans wanted to take advantage of the war by transporting goods for both sides, across each nation's blockade lines. The violation of the lines angered both governments, but Britain most of all. In a move widely hated in America, Britain started to seize U.S. ships and "impress" the sailors on the ships, claiming that they were actually British citizens and subject to British law. But President Thomas Jefferson was not looking for war, and worked hard with Congress to pass laws to exert economic, rather than military, force. Read More...
New Federalism, Old Illusions
Lawrence A. Hunter, Ph.D
June 26, 2009
An editorial in the Washington Examiner Friday ran under the headline “Conservatives must rediscover federalism.” When I read it, I had a feeling of déjà vu harkening back to the Reagan days of “New Federalism” when I was research director of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR).
I had come to ACIR from the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee on Capitol Hill at the behest of the Commission’s chairman Bob Hawkins. Hawkins at that time also was chairman of the Institute for Contemporary Studies, an early think tank founded in 1974 by Ed Meese and other Reagan associates intent on building an intellectual foundation beneath what later was characterized as “The Reagan Revolution.” Read More...
• The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 are among the most important documents in American history. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote the Resolutions in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, under which the federal government violated the First Amendment and exercised powers beyond those authorized by the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8). The relevance of the Resolutions continued through U.S. history to today's USA PATRIOT Act. Read More...
An Intellectual Crisis In American Federalism
By Dr. Lawrence Hunter and Ronald J. Oakerson
May 27, 2009
Generations of students have been taught that the Supreme Court of the United States is the great umpire of the American political system, an impartial referee policing the boundaries of authority between institutions of government and between government and the individual. The role of the Court, as commonly understood, is to protect against an improper and unconstitutional exercise of power by any institution of government vis-a-vis any other institution or individual, including the actions of both federal and state governments in relation to one another. Yet from 1936 to 1976, the Court did not overturn a single act of Congress for encroaching unduly upon
the powers of the states. Read More...
The Kentucky And Virginia Resolutions Guideposts of Limited Government
By William J. Watkins, Jr.
In 1885 Woodrow Wilson noted that criticism of the Constitution had ceased upon its adoption and "an undiscriminating and almost blind worship of its principles" had developed (Wilson 1885, 4). A survey of American political discourse after the Constitution's ratification reveals that its provisions were often quoted in such a manner as a minister would quote the Gospel. Considering that the history of Anglo-American liberty is, in many respects, a history of great charters and the events leading to their adoption, American reverence for the Constitution is not surprising (see Brooks 1993). Of course, the Constitution is not the only document in the pantheon. Read More...
Totalitarianism In Democracy; Tyranny By Committee
Lawrence A. Hunter Ph.D.
July 23, 2008
Princeton University professor emeritus Sheldon Wolin, viewed by many scholars as one of the deans of American political theorists and widely recognized as a liberal, argues in his recently published book Democracy Incorporated that the United States has evolved into a new political hybrid in which economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled, producing what he calls “inverted totalitarianism.”Wolin states the thesis of his book this way:
"It is possible for a form of totalitarianism, different from the classical one, to evolve from a putatively 'strong democracy' instead of a 'failed one.'"
Wolin, Sheldon S., Democracy Incorporated:Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2008... ReadMore. . .
The Virginia Report Of 1799-1800
Touching The Alien And Sedition Laws; Together With The Virginia Resolutions Of December 21, 1798, The Debate And Proceedings Thereon In The House Of Delegates Of Virginia, And Several Other Documents Illustrative Of The Report And Resolutions... Read More...
Virginia Resolution Of 1798
RESOLVED, That the General Assembly of Virginia, doth unequivocably express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former. Read More...
The Kentucky Resolutions Of 1798
Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government... Read More...
Kentucky Resolution Of 1799
THE representatives of the good people of this commonwealth in general assembly convened, having maturely considered the answers of sundry states in the Union, to their resolutions passed at the last session, respecting certain unconstitutional laws of Congress, commonly called the alien and sedition laws, would be faithless indeed to themselves, and to those they represent, were they silently to acquiesce in principles and doctrines attempted to be maintained in all those answers, that of Virginia only excepted. To again enter the field of argument, and attempt more fully or forcibly to expose the unconstitutionality of those obnoxious laws, would, it is apprehended be as unnecessary as unavailing... Read More...
Urgent Petition
Sign the petition to stop Social Security Cuts and send a fax to every Member of Congress demanding they cut other spending, NOT SOCIAL SECURITY.
Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner once again betrays the freedom movement in supporting Sen. Chuck Schumer's effort to tax future foreign earnings of Americans not living in the United States.
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Congressional Republicans are back up to their old shenanigans on ObamaCare. Politico reveals that Republicans would try to replicate popular parts of Obama’s health care law if the Supreme Court overturns the law this summer.
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The Food and Drug Administration has warned doctors to watch for fractures of the upper thigh bone in patients taking several popular drugs designed to prevent hip fractures and fight osteoprothesis. The FDA warns that Fosamax and Boniva in particular, if taken unnecessarily or for too long, may actually be causing the bone fractures they are prescribed to prevent. Watch ABC News video.
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Exit Not An Option In Chuck Schumer's America. New York Senator Chuck Schumer has introduced the Fugitive Taxpayer Act of 2012 to re-impose taxes on expatriates after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Proposal also would impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship and would bar such individuals from ever reentering the United States again.
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Whether President Obama gets his second term or Romney enters the Oval Office, there’s a third candidate no one’s paying much attention to, and that candidate is guaranteed to be the one clear winner of election 2012: the U.S. military and our ever-surging national security state.
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According to the New York Federal Reserve, two million US seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default. 4.2 percent of all student loan debt is held by people over the age of 60, and that share grows with each passing year.
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Across the U.S. economy, anxiety is rising about the potential for widespread disruptions after the November election, when a lame-duck Congress will have barely two months to resolve a grinding standoff over taxes and spending.
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Two-thirds of Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats polled support making immediate cuts to the military across the board -- a position at odds with the leaderships of both political parties.
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Video revealing the circumstances of how a mentally ill homeless man in Fullerton, Calif. died last July was finally published Monday, revealing a stunningly brutal police assault that left Kelly Thomas bleeding, broken and near death.
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The number of people with jobs declined for the second month in a row, falling by 169,000 in April after easing by 31,000 in March. This means that there were 200,000 fewer Americans with jobs in April than there were in February. Additionally, the percentage of working-age adults who either have jobs or are looking for work, fell to 63.6%, which is the lowest level since December 1981.
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Exit Not An Option In Chuck Schumer's America. New York Senator Chuck Schumer has introduced the Fugitive Taxpayer Act of 2012 to re-impose taxes on expatriates after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Proposal also would impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship and would bar such individuals from ever reentering the United States again.
