TKC BREAKING AND EXCLUSIVE NEWS!!! MUST READ!!! SHOW-ME MISSOURI HOUSE BILL 255 AGAINST PREZ OBAMA AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL FED GOV. TYRANNY!!!

TKC NOTE: Nowadays, I notice that denizens of this blog from both a left and right perspective seem to have a lot more in common than they might realize. Here's a good example of this trend. Check a BRILLIANT bit of elite Conservative writing that examines pending Missouri legislation and its constitutional implications. Check it:

Perhaps you've seen Missouri House Bill 255....

Missouri Congressman, Tim Remole, takes a swing at the Federal Government with a bat fashioned by Thomas Jefferson’s and his House Bill 255 (HB 255).

Specifically, HB 255 states:

“That any federal regulation or rule promulgated as a result of an executive order issued by the President of the United States must be declared invalid in Missouri and of no effect.”

Perhaps Representative Remole, like the rest of us, is tired with how our three branches of the federal government routinely ignore the United States Constitution and the desires of the electorate.

It is tempting to believe that, in the first years of our country, the federal government knew its place. That it was nothing more than a benign entity, happy with its role as defender of the states.

It is equally popular to blame the erosions of our most important document on the FDR’s administration. And, while that erosion did begin to pick up tremendous momentum under Roosevelt, the problem isn't with any particular administration. The trouble is with the very nature of government, which is to garner all power unto itself.

The states created a written Constitution with specifically enumerated powers to counter what they knew to be this inherent flaw in all governments. This is an exceptionally critical point. The states created the federal government to serve their needs in a very limited fashion. Not the other way around. Today, there is little doubt that the masters (the states) are no longer in charge of their servant.



The First Problem Started With Our First President. I'm a fan of George Washington. It pains me to point out that the very first violation of our Constitution took place before the term of our first president had ended.

1794 saw what has since become known as the Whiskey Rebellion. The federal government wanted to place an excise tax on the alcohol farmers produced. The farmers fought back and Washington raised a militia to enforce the taxes. Our third president later repealed these laws.

The next breach, one far more egregious than the first, happened only four short years later. President John Adams signed what was known as the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798.Without boring you with details, it allowed the government to deport aliens and imprison anyone who spoke out or wrote against the federal government.

You read that correctly. The U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, and a decade later freedom of speech was nearly eliminated. Lest you think I exaggerate, not only were newspaper editors fined, Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont was fined $1,000, arrested and jailed for a letter written to a friend (and one published in a newspaper criticizing President Adams).

Thomas Jefferson, then vice president, stood in staunch opposition to these clearly unconstitutional acts. He created an elegantly simple solution without calling for succession. Jefferson drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. Both documents said that it is the duty of the states to defend the liberties of their citizens, and each sovereign state, when the federal government oversteps its bounds.

“[W]hensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force[.]”

-- The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1798



In other words, if the federal government violates the Constitution, their actions are void AND the state must defend itself and its citizens against such actions.

Jefferson understood that it was the states' obligation and duty to interpose themselves between a federal government that will, by its very nature, routinely stray from the expressly limited powers as defined by the U.S. Constitution.

I've given up on the hope of changing the federal government from within. Each of the three branches, like a family, defends the other when under any threat of a reduction in their spending or curtailment of their powers. It is naïve to think that the Supreme Court will limit its own power, or that of its siblings in the other two branches, or to expect it to be an impartial arbitrator when it is one of the three that make up the whole. History has repeatedly proven as much.

It appears Congressman Remole has stolen a page from Jefferson's playbook of 1798. His solution to fixing the feds rests in our waking up our state governments to the duty they have to protect their citizens from an out-of-control central government.

It matters not whether you are a conservative, liberal or somewhere in between. Supporting states' rights not only is the right thing to do, it is probably the only thing we have left that can save this Union from slipping further into Socialism.
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