11 States Declare Sovereignty

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Human Events said:
State governors -- looking down the gun barrel of long-term spending forced on them by the Obama “stimulus” plan -- are saying they will refuse to take the money. This is a Constitutional confrontation between the federal government and the states unlike any in our time.

In the first five weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama has acted so rashly that at least 11 states have decided that his brand of “hope” equates to an intolerable expansion of the federal government’s authority over the states. These states -- "Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, [Minnesota]...Georgia," South Carolina, and Texas -- "have all introduced bills and resolutions" reminding Obama that the 10th Amendment protects the rights of the states, which are the rights of the people, by limting the power of the federal government. These resolutions call on Obama to “cease and desist” from his reckless government expansion and also indicate that federal laws and regulations implemented in violation of the 10th Amendment can be nullified by the states.

When the Constitution was being ratified during the 1780s, the 10th Amendment was understood to be the linchpin that held the entire Bill of Rights together. The 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."

The use of the 10th Amendment in conjunction with nullification garnered much attention in 1828, when the federal government passed a tariff that southerners believed affected them disproportionately. When the 1828 tariff was complemented by another in 1832, Vice President John C. Calhoun resigned the Vice Presidency to lead his home state of South Carolina in pursuit of an “ordinance of nullification,” which was no less a declaration of the sovereignty of each individual state within the union than the declarations now being made.

Calhoun was simply exercising what he recognized to be his state’s right to defend liberty within its borders by rejecting the dictates of an overbearing central government. While his efforts culminated in a tense affair referred to as the “nullification crisis,” which witnessed everything from threats of a federal invasion of South Carolina to an ongoing and near union-rending debate over national power vs. state’s rights, they also succeeded in turning back the tariffs that had been passed in spite of the Constitutional limits on federal power.

This time around, in 2009, appeals to the 10th Amendment are not based on tariffs but on unfettered government expansion in Obama’s “stimulus bill,” federal mandates on abortion that violate state laws, and infringements on the 1st and 2nd Amendments, among other things.

For example, Family Security Matters reports that Missouri’s “House Concurrent Resolution 0004 (2009) reasserts its sovereignty based on Barack Obama’s stated intention to sign into law a federal ‘Freedom of Choice Act’, [because] the federal Freedom of Choice Act would nullify any federal or state law ‘enacted, adopted, or implemented before, on, or after the date of [its] enactment’ and would effectively prevent the State of Missouri from enacting similar protective measures in the future.”

The resolution in Montana grew out of concerns over coming attacks on the 2nd Amendment, thus its preface describes it as, “An Act Exempting From Federal Regulation Under The Commerce Clause Of The Constitution Of The United States A Firearm, A Firearm Accessory, Or Ammunition Manufactured And Retained In Montana.”

New Hampshire’s resolution actually references certain federal actions that would be nullified within that state were they pushed by Obama’s administration, according to americandaily.com. Among these are “Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press, [and any] further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition.

Regardless of the specific reason behind each of the resolutions in the 11 states, all of them direct the federal government to “cease and desist” in its reckless violation of state’s rights. In this way, South Carolina’s resolution is typical of the others issued to date:

“The General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, by this resolution, claims for the State of South Carolina sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the United States Constitution…

Be it…resolved that this resolution serves as notice and demand to the federal government, as South Carolina's agent, to cease and desist immediately all mandates…beyond the scope of the federal government's constitutionally delegated powers.”

What these state assemblies and congresses have hit upon here is key to our entire conservative interpretation of the Constitution, for these states understand that the Constitution limits the federal government, not the people. Or to put it another way, it guarantees the freedom of the people by limiting the government.

Every conservative should relish the call for the federal government to “cease and desist all mandates that are beyond the scope of [its] constitutionally delegated powers.” In this way, we honor the Constitution that enumerates a number of our liberties yet also guarantees us other liberties that are neither enumerated nor denied in the document.

Liberals don’t respect the Constitution, and liberals in Congress don’t hesitate to propose legislation that would clearly violate it. The current push to give Washington, D.C. a voting representative in the House of Representatives is a good example; even liberal Prof. Jonathan Turley told a Congressional hearing that this bill is patently unconstitutional. But they press on with it.

Our Constitutional system of checks and balances is always thought of as enabling two of the three branches of the federal government to keep the third within its constitutional bounds. But there is a fourth check, the states, which also have a Constitutional function. It is to them this burden now falls. The states can choose between allowing the federal government to impose untenable conditions on them if they accept the stimulus money, or to reject it.

These eleven states have the right to reject the stimulus plan. And they must.

There is no other option. For this federal expansion will not stop unless we stand in its way with courage in our hearts and the Constitution in our hands.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30807
 
Good for them. Hopefully Obama doesn't pull and Lincoln on them
 
I agree. Good for the states. I hope Tennessee joins them.
 
This is Great News. I've posted this in the State's Rights thread. The Federal Government no longer believes in the 10th Amendment, and most Americans don't even know what it is either.
 
I agree. Good for them. It is their right to refuse the money. The federal government has no authority to force money and a budget agenda onto a state. Anyhow, if Obama really tries to push this, it will go to the Supreme Court and he will lose, and it will be humiliating for him, so he'd best just step down.
 
This is awesome news and I'm glad to see my state is on that list. Heres to hoping Missouri will follow suit with Montana and if the 2nd amendment is infringed on then they will write something similiar to counter act it.
 
Texas has always been sovereign.....:o:cwink:
 
I'm estatic about this news also. It brings a lot of joy in my heart to hear that states are standing up and saying that they aren't pushovers.

It also makes me happy that a lot of people are waking up and realizing that Obama isn't the savior or messiah that the mainstream media has made him out to be.
 
California won't join because the state needs that stimulus for its own budget. If I was Governator I'd join just to piss off Pelosi.
 
On one hand, I agree that the states should have the right to refuse the money. On the other, if they refuse the money, the stimulus plan can't work the way it was intended. They're setting the plan up for failure.

I honestly believe that this has more to do with sticking it to Obama than it actually does with any rights issue. Even the article is laced with language that villifies Obama the same way the MSM idolizes him.

So way to go, GOP. Way to use the constitution of the United States as a distraction from the petty agendas and political irrelevance that have been pretty apparent from your end since Obama's election. :up:
 
A lot of these State Bills were written before anyone knew of Obama Nationally.
 
Anyone thinking Titor is just a bit off on his date?
 
Anyone thinking Titor is just a bit off on his date?

Didn't he say while the events that cause the civil war would be set into motion in 2004, the signs of it wouldn't become apparent until 2008? Maybe he was right all along.
 
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?fc_c=1373919x2878623x147159356&id=30917


16 out of 50. The movement grows.



Five More States Invoke the 10th
by A.W.R. Hawkins

03/04/2009


Last week, HUMAN EVENTS reported that eleven states, Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas, had all “all introduced bills and resolutions” declaring their sovereignty over Obama’s actions in light of the 10th Amendment.

These actions are in response to the Obama administration’s faux-“stimulus” legislation which directly assaults the rights of states to reject the money coming from the federal government. So far, several Republican governors -- among them South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal -- have said they would refuse all or part of the stimulus money because of the constitutional infringements and because of the additional unfunded liabilities they impose on the states.

This week, HUMAN EVENTS is happy to report that five more states have decided to invoke the 10th as well.


These five -- Tennessee, Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana, and West Virginia -- have all begun their action under the 10th Amendment in a bid to protect themselves from what they view as nothing less than an unconstitutional usurpation of power on the part of the Obama administration.

On February 23, HJR 108 was put forth in the Tennessee legislature, indicating that legislators in that state decided “it [was] time to affirm state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and demand the federal government halt its practice of assuming powers and of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution,” according to Truman Bean.

The very next day, February 24, Kentucky State Representative John Will Stacy (D), “introduced House Concurrent Resolution 168… serving notice to the federal government to cease mandates beyond its authority.”

In declaring their sovereignty these states have joined what has come to be known as “the 10th Amendment movement.” It is a grassroots, conservative movement that seeks to defend the separation of powers as originally set forth by our Founders in the Constitution.

Through this movement, conservatives are throwing down the gauntlet against tyranny and the abuse of power. They are invoking the 10th Amendment at the state level against abuses of power by the federal government, and doing so with appeals to the extra-constitutional writings of our Founding fathers.

For example, Indiana’s resolution calls attention to the words of Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist and Founder who “expressed his hope that ‘the people will always take care to preserve the constitutional equilibrium between the general and the state governments.’” Hamilton “believed that ‘this balance between the national and state governments forms a double security to the people. If one [government] encroaches on their rights, they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from over-passing their constitutional limits by [the] certain [rivalry] which will ever subsist between them.’”

Kansas’ Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1609 delves even deeper into the mechanics of the matter by reminding the Obama administration, as well as the House and Senate, that “the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the state.” In other words, the federal government exists by and for the states, not the other way around.

The resolution headed to West Virginia’s 79th Legislature couples its action under the 10th Amendment with a reminder directed to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.): “[The] United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states.” This reminder is followed by a pronouncement that “a number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from Congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States.”

In light of these violations of the Constitution, the stated purpose of West Virginia’s resolution is, in part, to “serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”

Our rights as citizens are under assault by an administration of leftist ideologues with an insatiable appetite for power. There is little difference between them and the appeasement-drunken, government-expanding leftists in Lyndon Baines Johnson’s administration of whom Ronald Reagan said in 1964, “Inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government…and freedom is close to slipping from our grip.”

Every state assembly and legislature that has joined “the 10th Amendment movement” understands that Reagan’s words about freedom’s fragility in 1964 are no less true for our day when not only freedom, but also the America ideal, is “close to slipping from our grip.”

We must stand shoulder to shoulder with states like Tennessee, Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana, and West Virginia in demanding that the federal government immediately “cease and desist” its usurpation of our liberties.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HUMAN EVENTS columnist A.W.R. Hawkins has been published on topics including the U.S. Navy, Civil War battles, Vietnam War ideology, the Reagan Presidency, and the Rebirth of Conservatism, 1968-1988. More of his articles can be found at www.awrhawkins.com.
 
If they choose not to take the Stimulus money, that is their right
 
On one hand, I agree that the states should have the right to refuse the money. On the other, if they refuse the money, the stimulus plan can't work the way it was intended. They're setting the plan up for failure.

I honestly believe that this has more to do with sticking it to Obama than it actually does with any rights issue. Even the article is laced with language that villifies Obama the same way the MSM idolizes him.

So way to go, GOP. Way to use the constitution of the United States as a distraction from the petty agendas and political irrelevance that have been pretty apparent from your end since Obama's election.

Yes blame the GOP, the god damn dirty, corrupt, sore losing, GOP's fault. All of it. But lets completely ignore the fact that:

Washington, Kansas, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, Oklahoma have Democratic governors. That's eleven out of the sixteen states. Just in case you don't want to do the math.

Washington, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Minnesota have large Democratic majorities in both chambers of their legislatures. West Virginia has a Democratic supermajority in both chambers of its legislature. Indiana and Kentucky have Democratic majorities in their House of Representatives, Montana is has the same amount of Democrats as Republicans in their House of Representatives and are considered the majority party. In Tennesse, the Democrats have a large minority to where Democratic support is needed to get anything done in their House of Representatives. In Georgia's Senate Democratic support is needed because Republicans don't have 2/3 control That's five states legislatures with Democratic majorities in both chambers. Three states with Democratic majorities in one chamber. That accounts for eight out of sixteen states, plus Tennessee making it nine out of sixteen.

So as you can see here, I have clearly proven that it is the GOPs fault for this, all because they have a grudge against Obama.
 
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Yes blame the GOP, the god damn dirty, corrupt, sore losing, GOP's fault. All of it. But lets completely ignore the fact that:

Washington, Kansas, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, Oklahoma have Democratic governors. That's eleven out of the sixteen states. Just in case you don't want to do the math.

Washington, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Minnesota have large Democratic majorities in both chambers of their legislatures. West Virginia has a Democratic supermajority in both chambers of its legislature. Indiana and Kentucky have Democratic majorities in their House of Representatives, Montana is has the same amount of Democrats as Republicans in their House of Representatives and are considered the majority party. In Tennesse, the Democrats have a large minority to where Democratic support is needed to get anything done in their House of Representatives. In Georgia's Senate Democratic support is needed because Republicans don't have 2/3 control That's five states legislatures with Democratic majorities in both chambers. Three states with Democratic majorities in one chamber. That accounts for eight out of sixteen states, plus Tennessee making it nine out of sixteen.

So as you can see here, I have clearly proven that it is the GOPs fault for this, all because they have a grudge against Obama.


Its teh damn clintonites! damn their bitterness! :cmad: :cwink:
 

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