By A.W.R. Hawkins
Invoke the 10th
As of last week 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 Obamas actions in light of the 10th Amendment.
These actions are in response to the Obama administrations 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 Carolinas Mark Sanford and Louisianas 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 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 Indianas 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 Virginias 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 Virginias 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 Johnsons 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 Reagans words about freedoms 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.
