Powers Not Delegated

I'm a Constitutionalist and I make no apologies for bieng so.  Quite the opposite in fact.  Before any party affiliation I might claim, my first loyalty is always to the Constitution of the United States of America.  As such, the growth and expansion of the federal government not only frightens me, it angers me.  It is a blatant violation of an amendment that the Supreme Court and Congress have evidently forgotten about.

The 10th amendment is one of the most important and least regarded amendments to the Constitution.  So important that it had to be included in the Bill of Rights.  I've read the Constitution several times of course, but I could remember the exact words of the 10th amendment so I went back and checked today.  Something leapt out and smacked me in my face. 

The amendment itself is only 28 words long, but its intent can be summarized in a single word of the 28.  The text reads, "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 writers of our Constitution were very careful about the words they used so the use of the word "delegated" in that amendment is not an accident of chance or a misunderstanding.  It was deliberate.

According to Mirriam-Webster, to delegate means to assign responsibility or authority.  This means that all rights first belonged to the states and a very fair few were "delegated" to the federal government.  What the states did not agree to let them have through ratification of the document is in no way under the authority of the federal government.

I know that for the few people who actually read my blogs that I am most likely preaching to the choir, but I continue to be baffled by the misinterpretation of an amendment made so obvious by the use of that single, very powerful word.

Wouldn't it be fun to have an organization of lawyers the size and power of the ACLU whose sole function was to pull every law passed by Congress into the Supreme Court as a violation of the tenth amendment?  Maybe then we could get the two branches of government who should pay it the highest respect to remember it actually exists.

Empathy VS The Rule Of Law

Several times President Obama has stated that he'll look for a Supreme Court Justice who will bring empathy to the bench. I've written on this before, but what makes this one different is an inconsistency that jumped up and smacked me in the face today. My cheek still stings from that slap. On one hand we have the administration speaking about how we have to adhere to the rule of law and no considerations can be given to circumstances when looking at what the previous administration did. They've released the names and addresses of our CIA interrogators, released classified documents, and are even now considering dealing with the Spanish Judge who wants to try our previous president for war crimes. This is all under the guise of "adhering to the rule of law." And then with the next breath they're saying that we need a Supreme Court Justice with empathy. That a person's situation and experiences need to be considered in any decision. This has me scratching my head a bit.

So which is it? Do we adhere to the rule of law, or do we have empathy? No consideration is being made to the previous administration for the situation they were in or the circumstances they faced. No empathy. So is the current administration saying that everybody deserves empathy except for the previous administration?

What bothers me here is the double standard. Pick a stance and hold it. Stay with it. Rule of law or empathy. But either way, we are sure seeing that according to Obama all men are not created equal.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. - Thomas Jefferson

The Unbalanced Branch

The writers of the constitution thought of additional rights that were so important that they immediately added them to the articles they had already written; thereby giving us the Bill of Rights and the first 10 amendments to our Constitution. Several of these amendments have been getting pummeled a bit, but one has been all but pounded into dust. This is the 10th amendment and a very important one. In fact, it was the violation of this amendment in the abolition of slavery (a very good violation but a violation all the same) that caused this country to split and erupt into civil war. But did we learn from this? Nope. And who has been the most guilty in the violation of this amendment? Why the very branch of our government whose sole purpose is to protect and uphold it. And now the Legislature, which the Judiciary is supposed to keep in check, has also decided that the 10th amendment no longer exists.

The wording of the amendment is, as you'll see, so very complicated that it's easy to understand how it could be misinterpreted. The amendments 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." Easy to see how this could be misinterpreted isn't it? Perhaps this is why the Supreme Court and Congress read this to mean that anything not prohibited by the Constitution is covered under the Constitution and any state law against it is in violation of the Constitution. Perhaps this is why Congress now thinks that they can give money to the states and tell the states exactly how that money should be sent. Perhaps this is why Congress thinks that they have the right to dictate what programs the states will have and how they will be run. Perhaps.

Each branch was set up with a check and a balance by our founding fathers in an effort to keep any one branch from gaining too much power. However, the balance we have for the Judicial branch is simply who is appointed. The problem with this has become pretty obvious. The Executive branch has appointed Judges that will interpret the Constitution in these broad terms and these appointments are approved by a Congress who wants the same. Therein lies the lack of balance. When the other 2 branches appoint Judges who will rule in violation of the Constitution instead of in support of it, then our system of checks and balances is out of balance. And when that amendment is violated by our Supreme Court, who do you complain to? What recourse do we have?

The only control we have is to pay attention to who is appointed and to speak out. Let your Congressmen know how you feel. Absolutely let them know whenever they do anything you don't agree with. They are there to serve as a representative for you. They are supposed to be representing your views. How can they do that if you don't let them know what they are. Read the Constitution. Know it. Teach it to your children for the schools may not. Educate yourself and those around you. Serve as the final balance in our system to counter that out of balance branch.