by Michael Boldin

In states around the country, there’s a growing movement to address and resist two of the most abused parts of the Constitution – the Commerce Clause and the 2nd Amendment.  Already being considered in a number of state legislatures, and passed as law in Montana and Tennessee this year, the Firearms Freedom Act (FFA) is a state law that seeks to do just that.

The latest to join the FFA movement?  Kentucky.  Pre-filed for the 2010 legislative session, HB87seeks to “Create new sections of KRS Chapter 237, relating to firearms, firearm accessories and ammunition that are made in Kentucky, marked made in Kentucky, and used in Kentucky, to specify that these items are exempt from federal law”

While the FFA’s title focuses on federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s limit on the power of the federal government.  The bills in state houses contain language such as the following:

“federal laws and regulations do not apply to personal firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition that is manufactured in [this state] and remains in [state]. The limitation on federal law and regulation stated in this bill applies to a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured using basic materials and that can be manufactured without the inclusion of any significant parts imported into this state.”

NULLIFICATION

Some supporters of the legislation say that a successful application of such a state-law would set a strong precedent and open the door for states to take their own positions on a wide range of activities that they see as not being authorized to the Federal Government by the Constitution.

The principle behind such legislation is nullification, which has a long history in the American tradition. When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.

All across the country, activists and state-legislators are pressing for similar legislation, to nullify specific federal laws within their states.

A proposed Constitutional Amendment to effectively ban national health care will go to a vote in Arizona in 2010.  Fourteen states now have some form of medical marijuana laws - in direct contravention to federal laws which state that the plant is illegal in all circumstances.  And, massive state nullification of the 2005 Real ID Act has rendered the law nearly void.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Supporters say the growth of such a movement is long overdue.

“For far too long elected officials and unelected bureaucrats at the federal level have passively forgotten or actively neglected the Tenth Amendment that guarantees rights not enumerated in the Constitution be left to the individual states,” said Minnesota State Rep. Tom Emmer, who introduced an FFA in his state. “The willful disregard of the Tenth Amendment in relation to a citizen’s right to bear arms isn’t the only constitutional infringement that we should be worried about, but it is one that has been singled out by the new administration.”

“Enough is enough,” urged Tennessee State Senator Mae Beavers. “Our founders fought too hard to ensure states’ sovereignty and I am sick and tired of activist federal officials and judges sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”

Read the rest here.

by Russell D. Longcore

Not so long ago, secession was a taboo subject for discussion in polite society. It was almost un-American to thoughtfully consider a state leaving the Union for any reason. Everyone thought that Lincoln’s War settled that issue. But today’s America is a seething cauldron of resentment toward Washington and the “Mobocracy Looter Minions” that populate the District of Columbia and its suburbs.

If you watch any news service for seven days, you’ll learn that the dollar is weak and growing weaker. You’ll learn that other nations are preparing to disconnect from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. And you’ll learn that America is in big trouble, at home and around the world. (Wonder why Chicago didn’t get the Olympics? What countries like the USA right now?)

Over half of the American states have passed legislative resolutions exerting their rights under the Tenth Amendment. That’s nice, and symbolic…and somewhat unusual for slaves to stand up to the plantation owner. But it’s not really necessary.

So when is the best time to actually pull the trigger and secede from the United States?

I believe that states should be making concrete plans right now for secession. States already have intricate plans in place in case of natural disasters and such. Should not a state have a plan in place in case of political disaster?

The United States Federal Government is a dying monster. But is still possesses political might, military might and potency. Dying monsters quite often thrash about and injure those that are too nearby. So at this point in time, while Washington still APPEARS viable, state secession would not seem to be a wise move.

After all, why would a state willingly take the chance of incurring the wrath of Washington? It would be like in the Tolkien movie “Return of the King,” when the good guys presented themselves at the Black Gate to divert the gaze of Sauron’s all-seeing eye. Washington might turn its fury on a seceding state to make an example of it, in order to discourage any other state from trying secession.

Washington is working 24/7 to produce substantive changes in American governance and culture. And, at some point, some state might decide that enough is enough. But I believe that it will take an event that happens outside of Washington to bring about Washington’s collapse.

The most likely event is the worldwide rejection of the US Dollar as reserve currency, and the worldwide use of any other currency as reserve. Even the change of the dollar as the currency of choice of any major petroleum bourse¹ will spell disaster for the dollar.

Iran has already formed an oil bourse, which uses the Euro, the Iranian Rial and a basket of other currencies as the settlement currency for petro transactions. Its first day of trading was Monday, October 26, 2009, on the Free Trade Zone Iranian island of Kish. Iran, having the world’s second largest gas reserves and third largest oil reserves, is trying to play a more active role in oil and petrochemical transactions in international markets.

Between the rejection of the dollar worldwide, and the selloff of US Government securities by nations like China, combined with runaway money printing by Washington and the hyperinflation that MUST follow, the dollar has nowhere to go but down…and precipitously.

The value of the dollar will tumble against other currencies…very soon. It will happen as other nations scramble to get rid of American currency and securities holdings and protect the very survival of their own nations. Washington has been passing bad checks for too long, and the nations are stepping to the pay window.

It is at this moment in time, when the dollar freefalls, that the states will have a golden opportunity to secede. States must do what it takes to assure their own survival, and not as a slave state to Washington. But a secession alone won’t solve anything. The heavy lifting just begins when a state secedes.

First there would have to be a Provisional Government installed until the formal government could be designed and brought into being as a legal entity.

The very next thing that MUST be settled is the issue of money. If a new nation adopts the very same banking environment that America has right now, the new nation will be doomed to fail. The new nation MUST have a 100% gold/silver standard. It must also prohibit by law fractional reserve banking. Both government monopoly on monetary policy and fractional reserve banking are counterfeiting by another name. It must be prevented before it starts.

Monetary policy and banking worldwide is failing. A new nation needs to go another way, and that way is to return to sound money. Most of the other challenges that a new nation would face will be easier if the new nation has money backed with precious metals at 100% reserve. But you cannot counterfeit your way to liberty and prosperity.

Timing is everything. If states secede at the time that Washington is drowning in worldwide debt and the financial markets worldwide cause the collapse of the dollar, Washington may be powerless to stop secession. Ask Moscow how well they stopped the secession of the Western Soviet republics in 1989.

I know I’m getting to be “Johnny One-Note” about monetary policy, but that should tell you how crucial it is. Remember that no nation in the history of the world has survived that counterfeited its money. Not one. Ever.

But also remember that the Byzantine empire, on a gold standard, lasted over a thousand years…until it debased its own money.

by Cal Thomas

Does the U.S. Constitution stand for anything in an era of government excess? Can that founding document, which is supposed to restrain the power and reach of a centralized federal government, slow down the juggernaut of czars, health insurance overhaul and anything else this administration and Congress wish to do that is not in the Constitution?

The Framers created a limited government, thus ensuring that individuals would have the opportunity to become all that their talents and persistence would allow. The left has put aside the original Constitution in favor of a “living document” that they believe allows them to do whatever they want and demand more tax dollars with which to do it.

Can they be stopped? Some constitutional scholars think the 10th Amendment offers the best opportunity. The 10th 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.”

In 1939, the Supreme Court began to dilute constitutional language so that it became open to broader interpretation. Robert G. Natelson, professor of constitutional law and legal history at the University of Montana, has written that even before Franklin D. Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme, it was changing the way the Constitution was interpreted, especially “how the commerce and taxing powers were turned upside-down, the necessary and proper clauses and incidental powers, the false claim that the Supreme Court is conservative, how bad precedent leads to more bad court rulings, state elections as critical for constitutional activists, and more.”

While during the last seven decades the court has tolerated the federal welfare state, Mr. Natelson says it has never, except in wartime, “authorized an expansion of the federal scope quite as large as what is being proposed now. And in recent years, both the Court and individual justices – even ‘liberal’ justices – have said repeatedly that there are boundaries beyond which Congress may not go. … Chief Justice John Marshall once wrote that if Congress were to use its legitimate powers as a ‘pretext’ for assuming an unauthorized power, ‘it would become the painful duty’ of the Court ‘to say that such an act was not the law of the land.’ “

It would be nice to know now what those boundaries are and whether Congress is exceeding its powers as it prepares to alter one-sixth of our economy and change how we access health insurance and health care.

Mr. Natelson makes a fascinating argument in his essay “Is ObamaCare Constitutional?” using the court’s Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973. In Roe, he writes, the court struck down state abortion laws that “intruded into the doctor-patient relationship. But the intrusion invalidated in Roe was insignificant compared to the massive intervention contemplated by schemes such as HB3200. ‘Global budgeting’ and ‘single-payer’ plans go even further and seem clearly to violate the Supreme Court’s Substantive Due Process rules.”

Constitutional attorney John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, tells me, “Although the states surrendered many of their powers to the new federal government, they retained a residuary and inviolable sovereignty that is reflected throughout the Constitution’s text. The Framers rejected the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the states, and instead designed a system in which the state and federal governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people. The Court’s jurisprudence makes clear that the federal government may not compel the states to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.”

Lawyers are busy writing language only they can understand, which seeks to circumvent the intentions of the Founders. But it will be difficult to circumvent the last four words of the 10th Amendment, which state unambiguously where ultimate power lies: “or to the people.”

Americans who believe their government should not be a giant ATM, dispensing money and benefits to people who have not earned them, and who want their country returned to its founding principles, must exercise that power before it is taken from them. The 10th Amendment is one place to begin. The streets are another. It worked for the left.

Tenth Amendment Center

Introduced in the Ohio  House on October 16, 2009, the “Firearms Freedom Act” (HB-315)  seeks “To enact section 2923.26 of the Revised Code to provide that ammunition, firearms, and firearm accessories that are manufactured and remain in Ohio are not subject to federal laws and regulations derived under Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce and to require the words “Made in Ohio” be stamped on a central metallic part of any firearm manufactured and sold in Ohio.”

The bill was authored by State Representatives Morgan and Martin, and currently has 15 other co-sponsors.  (h/t BuckeyeFirearms.org and OhioFreedom.com)

While the HB315’s title focuses on federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s limit on the power of the federal government.  It specifically states:

The regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, particularly if not expressly preempted by federal law. The congress of the United States has not expressly preempted state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an intrastate basis of firearms, firearm accessories, and ammunition.

Some supporters of the legislation say that a successful application of such a state-law would set a strong precedent and open the door for states to take their own positions on a wide range of activities that they see as not being authorized to the Federal Government by the Constitution.

Firearms Freedom Acts have already passed in both Montana and Tennessee, and have been introduced in a number of other states around the country. There’s been no lack of controversy surrounding them, either.  The Tenth Amendment Center recently reported on the ATF’s position that such laws don’t matter:

The Federal Government, by way of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms expressed its own view of the Tenth Amendment this week when it issued an open letter to ‘all Tennessee Federal Firearms Licensees’ in which it denounced the opinion of Beavers and the Tennessee legislature.  ATF assistant director Carson W. Carroll wrote that ‘Federal law supersedes the Act’, and thus the ATF considers it meaningless.

Constitutional historian Kevin R.C. Gutzman sees this as something far removed from the founders’ vision of constitutional government:

“Their view is that the states exist for the administrative convenience of the Federal Government, and so of course any conflict between state and federal policy must be resolved in favor of the latter.”

“This is another way of saying that the Tenth Amendment is not binding on the Federal Government. Of course, that amounts to saying that federal officials have decided to ignore the Constitution when it doesn’t suit them.”

Advocates of these efforts say it doesn’t matter if the federal government disagrees, or even threatens states over funding, as they did recently with Oklahoma.  Gary Marbut, author of the Montana Firearms Freedom Act, and founder of http://www.firearmsfreedomact.com/ took this position in a recent interview with the Tenth Amendment Center:

“We’re not depending on permission from federal judges to be able to effectuate our state-made guns bills.  And, we’re working on other strategies to wrest essential and effective power from the federal government and put it where it belongs.“

The principle behind such legislation is nullification, which has a long history in the American tradition. When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.

All across the country, activists and state-legislators are pressing for similar legislation, to nullify specific federal laws within their states.

A proposed Constitutional Amendment to effectively ban national health care will go to a vote in Arizona in 2010.  Fourteen states now have some form of medical marijuana laws - in direct contravention to federal laws which state that the plant is illegal in all circumstances.  And, massive state nullification of the 2005 Real ID Act has rendered the law nearly void.

While many advocates concede that a federal court battle has a slim chance of success, they point to the successful nullification of the Real ID Act as a blueprint to resist various federal laws that they see as outside the scope of the Constitution.

Some say that each successful state-level resistance to federal programs will only embolden others to try the same – resulting in an eventual shift of power from the federal government to the States and the People themselves.

by Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon, candidate for Governor of OK