The Tea Party Documentary is premiering tonight in Washington D.C. and this video is of the song featured in the film. Even if you don’t like rap music you will appreciate the message clearly made to those in Washington D.C. Mark your calendar for April 15, 2010 - Tea Party for President Obama.
“The States should be left to do whatever they can do as well as the federal government”
Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
One of the most contentious points in the formation of a Federal government came from the individual states. The states didn’t want to lose the ability to make regional decisions nor to be subject to an overriding power from a distant national capital. The Tenth Amendment was written to reassure the states that they would remain largely in charge within their own borders. Until the mid-19th century, the Tenth Amendment was often cited by state governments to prevent Federal regulation of everything from taxation to interstate commerce. Since 1837, however, various rulings have mitigated the straightforward meaning of the Tenth Amendment, and such matters as a Federal income tax were subsequently upheld in the courts.
The key principle of the Constitution is quite simple: positive grant. Unfortunately, this is not a phrase that many of us hear in daily banter these days. But, it’s not a complicated principle at all.
What it means is this – the US federal government is authorized to exercise only those powers which are specifically given to it in the Constitution. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Period. End of story.
The founders felt so strongly about this principle that they codified it in law as the Tenth Amendment:
“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.”
Just a casual review of the activities of the federal government would make clear that there’s very little that it does which is actually authorized by the Constitution.
For many, many years, we’ve allowed our politicians to interpret and bend the rules of the Constitution; ostensibly for good reasons. But, we have to face reality. When you allow politicians to do this over long periods, eventually you end up with leaders who feel that the law doesn’t apply at all.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
If we are to have a free society for the future, we must reign in this out-of-control federal government, and return to our Constitution; with a special emphasis on the limitations imposed on government by the Tenth Amendment.
From Representative Steve King ( only audio – no download time – listen for 5 minutes)
Michelle Bachmann invites you to Washington DC. Thursday November 5th, at 12:00 Noon on the Capitol steps ! It is called storm Washington!
By Andrew P. Napolitano
Last week, I asked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do.” Then he shot back: “How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?”
Rep. Clyburn, like many of his colleagues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the federal government has only specific enumerated powers. He also seems to have overlooked the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which limit Congress’s powers only to those granted in the Constitution.
One of those powers—the power “to regulate” interstate commerce—is the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.
Unfortunately, a notoriously tendentious New Deal-era Supreme Court decision has given Congress a green light to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noncommercial, and even purely local, private behavior. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court held that a farmer who grew wheat just for the consumption of his own family violated federal agricultural guidelines enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause. Though the wheat did not move across state lines—indeed, it never left his farm—the Court held that if other similarly situated farmers were permitted to do the same it, might have an aggregate effect on interstate commerce.
James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison’s understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept “regular.”
The Supreme Court finally came to its senses when it invalidated a congressional ban on illegal guns within 1,000 feet of public schools. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the Court ruled that the Commerce Clause may only be used by Congress to regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core and that has not traditionally been regulated by the states. The movement of illegal guns from one state to another, the Court ruled, was criminal and not commercial at its core, and school safety has historically been a state function.
Applying these principles to President Barack Obama’s health-care proposal, it’s clear that his plan is unconstitutional at its core. The practice of medicine consists of the delivery of intimate services to the human body. In almost all instances, the delivery of medical services occurs in one place and does not move across interstate lines. One goes to a physician not to engage in commercial activity, as the Framers of the Constitution understood, but to improve one’s health. And the practice of medicine, much like public school safety, has been regulated by states for the past century.
The same Congress that wants to tell family farmers what to grow in their backyards has declined “to keep regular” the commercial sale of insurance policies. It has permitted all 50 states to erect the type of barriers that the Commerce Clause was written precisely to tear down. Insurers are barred from selling policies to people in another state.
That’s right: Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person’s appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce.
What we have here is raw abuse of power by the federal government for political purposes. The president and his colleagues want to reward their supporters with “free” health care that the rest of us will end up paying for. Their only restraint on their exercise of Commerce Clause power is whatever they can get away with. They aren’t upholding the Constitution—they are evading it.
Mr. Napolitano, who served on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel.
(from Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203917304574412793406386548.html
Your attention and your vigilance in acting on this is very important in protecting our constitution.
On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change skeptic, gave a presentation at Bethel University in St. Paul, MN. In this 4 minute excerpt from his speech, he issues a dire warning to all Americans regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty, scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009. A draft of the petition can be read here:
http://www.globalclimatescam.com/documents/un-fccc-copenhagen-2009.pdf
Here is the full presentation of Lord Christopher Monckton:
http://www.globalclimatescam.com/?p=552
Here is the full slide presentation:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/asset…
Chuck Norris has an article in WorldNetDaily with a good analysis of the treaty:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE….
There has been considerable debate raised about Monckton’s conclusion that the Copenhagen Treaty would cede US sovereignty. His comments appear to be based upon his interpretation of the The Supremacy Clause in the US Constitution (Article VI, paragraph 2). This clause establishes the Constitution, Federal Statutes, and U.S. TREATIES as the supreme law of the land. Concerns have been raised in the past that a particularly ambitious treaty may supersede the US Constitution. In the 1950s, a constitutional amendment, known as the Bricker Amendment, was proposed in response to such fears, but it failed to pass. You can read more about the Bricker Amendment in a 1953 Time Magazine article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/art…,9171,806676-1,00.html
Lord Monckton served as a policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He has repeatedly challenged Al Gore to a debate to which Gore has refused. Monckton sued to stop Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” from being shown in British schools due to its inaccuracies. The judge found in-favor of Monckton, ordering 9 serious errors in the film to be corrected. Lord Monckton travels internationally in an attempt to educating the public about the myth of global warming.
Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution
This video explains the different types of government, what they mean, and what they stand for.
This video was posted on YouTube by Eric Cantor, Republican Whip. The vote controvery took place in August of 2007. The website url listed below will give details of the event and the following investigation. We shouldn’t consider this old news since it serves to show we’ve been on this path away from the constitution and a government serving the people for quite some time. There will be no Easy fix, nor should we dream of it happening overnight. It will take eternal vigilance.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=August_2007_House_voting_controversy
October 8, 2009
King: Liberals Use Worst Form of Politics to Pass “Hate Crimes” Legislation
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressman Steve King today made the following statement in opposition to hate crimes provisions that were inserted into the Conference Report for H.R. 2647, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.
“Today in the House we witnessed partisan politics at its worst. Liberals used a bill to fund our troops as a vehicle to pass new laws to protect classes of people that have never been defined or identified as a class before. This unconstitutional bill aims to protect new classes of people based on ‘gender identity’ and ‘sexual orientation.’
“These are classifications of people that are based on their inner feelings – their thoughts. Punishing ‘thought crimes’ will infringe on freedom of speech and religious expression, rights endowed to all Americans in the Constitution. Under this legislation, justice will no longer be equal. Instead, justice will depend on the race, gender, sexual orientation or protected status of the victim, setting up different penalties for the same crime.
“This ‘thought crimes’ bill shatters the American tradition of equal justice under the law.”
News Room Press Releases from Iowa State Representative Steve King
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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention met for the last time to sign the document they had created. We encourage all Americans to observe this important day in our nation’s history by attending local events in your area. Celebrate Constitution Day through activities, learning, parades and demonstrations of our Love for the United States of America and the Blessings of Freedom Our Founding Fathers secured for us.