STATES SEND WARNING TO FEDS



States say feds will not usurp powers guaranteed to them by 9th, 10th Amendments



By Pat Shannan



More than 20 states have passed recent resolutions in defiance of the central government’s intrusion into their liberties and governing powers, with all including a demand to obey the Constitution’s Ninth and Tenth Amendments. New Hampshire has issued what may be the harshest “Don’t Tread on Me” caveat of all.

Citing its own state constitution, the New Hampshire Legislature has issued its recent resolution “affirming states’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles” and reminding any Washington interventionists of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments in the U.S. Constitution as well as Part 1, Article 7 of their own state document that declares “. . . that the people of this state have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent state; and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right, pertaining thereto . . .”

It continued: “Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring: that the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, slavery, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that ‘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,’ therefore all acts of Congress which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory; and . . .

“That any act by the Congress of the United States, executive order of the president of the United States of America or judicial order by the judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several states or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States. Acts which would cause such a nullification include, but are not limited to:

“I. Establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the states without the consent of the legislature of that state.

“II. Requiring involuntary servitude, or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.

“III. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.

“IV. Surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government.

“V. Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press.

“VI. Further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition; and “That should any such act of Congress become law or executive order or judicial order be put into force, all powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution for the United States shall revert to the several states individually. Any future government of the United States of America shall require ratification of three quarters of the states seeking to form a government.”

Ever since Vermont threatened secession and others of the 20-plus have issued lesser threatening notices of intentions, all have made it clear that they are not happy with the current situation, and the action of all indicates that the New World Order may have a bigger problem on its hands than it initially considered.

The 21 states so far that have either introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments or are about to do so include: Arizona, Hawaii, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, Maine, Nevada, Kansas, Indiana, Idaho, Georgia, Colorado, California, Arkansas, Alabama, Alaska, and, of course, New Hampshire.

In another defiance of unconstitutional federal controls, governors are telling Washington bureaucrats that, under the 10th Amendment, they cannot dictate spending or other actions to the 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.”)

“We are telling the federal government that we are a sovereign state,” said Arizona state representative Judy Burges, who is leading an effort in her state to pass a resolution called “Sovereignty: the 10th Amendment.”

Oklahoma state Sen. Randy Brogdon (R) introduced a resolution he said would enable his state to “reclaim the 10th Amendment right to reject any and all acts of Congress that go beyond its enumerated powers in violation
of the 10th Amendment.”

Republican governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas expressed reservations about accepting stimulus funds because they are concerned that the federal government will dictate how it is spent.

The federal government extracts money from their taxpayers, sends a bit of it back and then dictates how it is spent, they argue.

Pat Shannan is a corresponding editor of American Free Press. He is also the author of several videos and books including One in a Million: An IRS Travesty and I Rode With Tupper, detailing Shannan’s experiences with Tupper Saussy when the American dissident was on the run in the 1960s.

(Issue # 11, March 16, 2009)

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I'm on it

You know, the caliber thing is kinda funny - you still get you have your guns - you're just not allowed to put anything in them. If they do it that way, that's some chickensh*t way of getting around the no banning firearms pledge. I mean, removing the 9mm para, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP rounds would literally knock off half the handgun market.

That's a very good reason for the rest of the States get together.
An ounce of prevention.

yeah I'm not sure anybody wants to get into what the pound of cure might end up being, so yeah.. good idea for the states to stick together..

what is it now? 21 states? and there are alot of fly-over red-states that haven't yet chimed in.. didn't see NM, LA, IA, much of the deep south, the dakotas (you know they're in) VA, WV..

there's potential for ratification there..

It seems that the idea that we the people have created this government to serve it's expressed purposes, and not more, not educate the states or the people, not to think for the state or the people, not to give us the endless new laws, has been kind of lost lately.

Regarding the second amendment, in particular, so many seem to think that the government of the union is naturally supposed to have any arms they desire, on the dime of the states and the people, while condescendingly deny the states and the people the same. Have it not, on the opposite, came about while the states and the people allowed the union to have arms, through assigning the duties of said government, those same arms that the states and the people naturally did bear at the time?

This movement sure gives me hope that the constitution is not dead, not yet.

Ok what is it that is triggering all these states to do this? Are you saying that Washington isn't aware of this already. What exactly is it you fear is going to happen that these states feel the desperate need to do this?

I don't see anything in the demands above that I disagree with particularly I just don't get the panic? for lack of a better word.

Yes I am a liberal in many ways, ducking, but no I do not want to be a socialist, or a commie as many of you are fond of throwing around, but I sure would like to know why folks are in such a panic here at Mingle when I don't see people getting all freaked out up here in the mountains where a city girl like me might expect.

So help me to get why this is so important and then I can find out why my own state isn't on that list.

Pres Hussein does not represent us. He represents his slice of the population, and is trying to silence, intimidate, and whatever else he can do to control everyone. Even he knows that we want him gone, no matter how. He is trying to take away our rights and leave us with a deficit we could perhaps never recover from. It is a show of power from the little people that the lying fat cat isn't going to push us around. While he tries to strip away what it is to BE American, people who have already seen through him are voicing it.

Well I have a very hard time accepting that the way it's presented.

ok....maybe i'm wrong on this....but didn't our forefathers design our government to prevent a president from having absolute power? congress has their hands into everyting as well. congress is made up of different parties

i said the same thing during bush...and i'm saying the same with obama

have i missed something?

both administrations, obama and bush, have been trying to relieve us of our right to carry a weapon. some people don't believe in carrying a weapon and that is fine. that is their right to believe that. but the constitution, in no uncertain terms, gives the right to the people to bear arms without being messed with by the government about it. obama's people are trying every little trick in the book to make it not difficult on people which is coming under resistance.

that's the way they designed it, but according to the memos that obama unclassified so from the bush administration, bush gave himself and any future president almost unfettered powers.

Patriot act.

And by the way, the non-binding resolutions passed by some states have zero effect in law. They're simply paper tigers.

And you can prove this, how?

Look up 'resolution' versus actual law. They're meaningless.

He lost me with the first two words.

but he had you at hello
sorry...couldn't resist lol

what exactly did Bush do to restrict the RTKBA?? letting the AWB sunset? It's patently false to put bush and obama in the same boat as far as weapons rights is concerned.



more and more unfunded mandates from the federal government, desgined to make as many people dependent on government as possible.

The states are not the central government's whipping boy but that's the way the fed gov, Obama and Congress see the states.

Simply more and more states are getting fed up.. that's all

ounce of prevention.

A non-binding resolution is a written motion adopted by a deliberative body that cannot progress into a law. The substance of the resolution can be anything that can normally be proposed as a motion.

This type of resolution is often used to express the body's approval or disapproval of something which they cannot otherwise vote on, due to the matter being handled by another jurisdiction, or being protected by a constitution. An example would be a resolution of support for a nation's troops in battle, which carries no legal weight, but is adopted for moral support.